Brief La Niña period ends
Last week, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center announced that the current La Niña weather conditions, which formed in January, have already dissipated. La Niña conditions are associated with cooler surface water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and stronger trade winds. Typically, this results in drier weather in the southern and southwestern parts of the United States.
The very dry fall and mild winter are an example of La Niña’s weather patterns. Alex Tardy, Warning Coordination Meteorologist in the San Diego NWS office, said in his post “The water year [Oct. 1, 2024 through Sept. 30, 2025] is about 50 percent of normal. It’s been really warm, much above normal in our mountains.”
The three-year La Niña from 2020 to 2022, which brought dangerous drought conditions to the west, is the last major La Niña.
El Niño conditions generally are the opposite, warmer surface water in the Pacific and weaker trade winds. This can result in more precipitation in Southern California.
However, the current neutral conditions are predicted to continue through summer and are most likely to continue through fall, according to the NWS. While the chance of El Niño conditions forming next winter are considered higher than La Niña, the probability of neutral conditions continuing are still the highest of the three possibilities, although spring forecasts are notoriously less accurate, according to NWS officials.
The problem with neutral conditions is they make it more difficult to make longer- range forecasts. There simply are no temperature or precipitation trends on which to rely. Meteorologists will have to rely on the most recent monthly and weekly conditions.
When neither El Niño nor La Niña are in effect, global seasonal conditions are less predictable, wrote Emily Becker on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s blog for “El Niño/Southern Oscillation” last week.
“As spring turns to summer, our crystal ball should become clearer. For now, we’ll bid La Niña adieu and bide our time in neutral,” Becker concluded.
