Unusually dry and warm conditions are likely to prevail across the southern United States this winter while a pattern of especially wet weather and cooler temperatures dominates a large area of the northwest, climate specialists predict.
The national Climate Prediction Center's U.S. Winter Outlook for December through February has "La Nina" written all over it, and deputy director Mike Halpert made clear that the building strength of the tell-tale pattern of below-average sea surface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific Ocean was adding confidence to the seasonal forecast.
By the end of the winter, public attention is likely to focus on especially dry conditions across much of the southeast, Halpert suggested, because "La Nina is kind of a drought creator."
"Florida is the most likely region to be dry this winter," he told a news conference. "There is a very real possibility that we will see a much drier than average winter."
La Nina and El Nino are names meteorologists use to describe a pattern of naturally occurring cool and warm ocean and atmospheric swings that periodically develop in the equatorial Pacific Ocean and spread their weather effects around the globe, most noticeably during winter.
La Nina tends to steer winter storms over the northern states, and El Nino more typically brings storms across the southern tier of the nation.
Halpert noted that the La Nina is developing into "one of the stronger ones we've seen to this point," a circumstance that does not portend stronger effects but rather increases forecasters' confidence that typical La Nina patterns will prevail.
Halpert observed that while the La Nina climate "signal" is strong and especially useful to residents in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Plains (wet and cool), the Southwest and Southeast (warm and dry) and the Tennessee and Ohio valleys (especially wet), the signal is not particularly strong or helpful to the heavily populated mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions, where winter is "often dominated by (shorter-term) phenomena that are not predictable on the seasonal timescale."
IMAGES: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Climate Prediction Center
Tags: Meteorology, Weather, Winter
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