La Niña

We heard all about El Niño last year. Now the weathercasters are talking about La Niña. What's going on here? La Niña is the sort of opposite of El Niño. El Niño is a climate pattern where the water in the Pacific Ocean near the equator gets hotter than usual and affects the atmosphere and weather around the world. During a La Niña, the water in the same area along the equator gets colder than usual. This, too, affects weather around the globe and in the U.S.

This year is the 16th time this century that there has been a La Niña climate pattern. So what will La Niña do to the weather in the U.S?

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), La Niña cycles generally create a favorable environment for hurricane activity in the Atlantic. (The most recent La Niña happened in 1995, a year that saw 11 hurricanes including Hurricane Marilyn, which hit the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Hurricane Opal, which caused more than $3 billion in damage in Florida and other southern states and caused 27 deaths.)

In the United States, La Niña is expected to bring above normal temperatures throughout most of the Southwest and southern Florida in the last summer and fall. These warmer conditions will extend across the Southeast during the winter months. Cooler than normal winter temperatures are expected in the Pacific Northwest. Cooler than normal temperatures are also expected across the Great Lakes and Northeast later in the winter into spring.

In addition to temperature effects, La Niña is also expected to affect rainfall. Drier than normal conditions will persist in west Texas, New Mexico and Arizona into October. The late fall and early winter forecasts indicate continued dry conditions throughout much of the southern U.S. and into portions of the Midwest. Above normal precipitation is predicted for much of the Pacific Northwest throughout the fall and into the winter months, and in the Ohio and Tennessee River Valley in the winter.

So what is La Niña going to do to the weather where you live?