Cold weather settled over Japan and the Korean Peninsula in January 2011, and for the first time since 1986, Japan experienced below-normal January temperatures.

A year-long La Niña contributed to dramatic variability in seasonal temperature patterns in 2011.

NOAA’s official Winter Outlook for 2011–2012 is unlikely to please many residents of either the still-soggy Missouri River Basin—which experienced historic flooding this past spring and summer—or the parched south-central United States, where severe to exceptional drought has been in place since spring.

Following a brief interlude of “neutral” sea surface temperature conditions this summer, La Niña has returned to the tropical Pacific Ocean. The cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern is expected to persist through winter.

In the semi-arid Horn of Africa, rain comes in two seasons: the “short rains” of October-December and the “long rains” of March-June. In late 2010 and early 2011, both rainy seasons brought scant rain to the region, which led devastating drought across several countries in 2011. In Somalia, the drought escalated to famine.