Currently in NYC — June 9, 2023: A chance of showers to clear the air

The weather, currently.

We will still have smoke in our atmosphere on Friday but it should gradually improve heading into the weekend. An Air Quality Alert remains in effect until midnight on Friday. Please continue to take precaution with this unhealthy air. Low pressure remains in our area which is likely to spark some showers and thunderstorms during the day. Expect mostly cloudy skies and a high near 70°F. With dissipating smoke and warmer temperatures, we might be able to salvage a nice weekend. Let’s hope. It’s been a stressful week; take care of yourselves.

Bike Forecast:

3 out of 10

— Stacy Blundell

What you need to know, currently.

El Niño has arrived, officially.

On Thursday, NOAA issued an El Niño advisory, meaning that two things have happened: 1) the temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean is now unusually warm, and 2) the atmosphere above the tropical Pacific has shifted in response — favoring drier weather over Southeast Asia and Australia, and wetter weather over western South America.

El Niño is the world’s most powerful and important weather pattern, and recurs on average once every 3-5 years. When it does, it adds tremendous amounts of energy to the world’s weather, shifting everything from hurricane development to droughts, floods, and fires in almost every part of the globe. It’s like global warming on steroids.

There’s now a 56% chance that this El Niño becomes ‘strong’ — defined as a warming of the central tropical Pacific Ocean more than 1.5°C. The last time that happened was 2015-16 when El Niño sent global temperatures soaring to a new record high, kicked off the worst drought in the Caribbean in 500 years, and prompted a surge in global carbon emissions from wildfires in Australia, Indonesia, and North America.

-Eric Holthaus

What you can do, currently.

Welcome to the new-and-improved Currently!

If you’re a big fan of Currently, please share us with a friend! Our brand-new referral program is a way to give our biggest fans direct ownership of our company. We are the first weather service in the world to do this, and we’ll have much more in the coming days on our hopes and dreams for member-ownership, as well as Currently as a whole.

Thank you for taking this exciting journey with us!

—Eric Holthaus