When the much-ballyhooed El Niño—you know, the one that was one of the strongest ever on record globally but didn’t quite drench Southern California as predicted—ended in June, we were told that a La Niña system would be following right behind. Now comes news that climate scientists are revising their predictions, and La Niña may not be happening after all.
As SF Gate reports, the odds of a La Niña winter have dropped considerably. Forecasts that previously stated a 75 percent chance of La Niña now find it more likely that conditions in the Pacific will remain neutral in the coming season.
“The forecaster consensus prefers this outcome, which is supported by the lack of significant anomalies in several indicators over the past month—winds, convection, subsurface temperatures,” states a report on the matter out of the National Weather Service.
El Niños correlate with a heating of the equatorial Pacific—this year, around 7 degrees—and then the strong currents that brought in that warm water flush it back out, bringing in the La Niña system. So far, those 7 degrees of heating have not cooled back down in the typical style.
The news of a neutral winter should be welcome for the region, as La Niña is associated with hot, dry conditions and lower than usual accumulations of rain and snow. That would be bad news for drought-ridden California, where even the El Niño rain was not enough to refill the painfully depleted water-table. Instead, we should look forward to a more normal LA winter.
Want more? Sign up here to stay in the know.