We are Absolutely Confident that Some Expected La Niña Impacts will Bust this Winter

Right now, with La Niña conditions currently underway, I guarantee at least one of our readers is currently thinking “This alleged ‘La Niña’ is going to bust so hard in my region. It’s supposed to be DRY and it’s been WET so far. What the heck is wrong with you people!? BUST, BUST, BUST…” It’s frustrating! I get it! That’s because I too am human and get weirdly annoyed when the forecast is for something I want to happen, say 5 inches of snow, and then we end up with dry pavement. But, being a scientist, I also realize that weather and climate predictions contain uncertainty. And uncertainty stinks especially when you really want that outcome to materialize.

So, today I am going to try to explain the inherent uncertainty that we typically see with winter (December–February) La Niña impacts over the United States. No one, I repeat, no one should be surprised when the expected La Niña impact—and by expected, I mean “based on what has happened during past events”—doesn’t happen everywhere we think it may happen. It would honestly be strange if it did! But, with any La Niña, even a weak one like the one we are currently observing, we can still bet on some La Niña-like impacts to arise. That’s true even if the impacts are not constant and across all twelve 3-month averages (“seasons”) that we produce climate outlooks for (They’re all here.). However, in this post, I’m only going to focus on past observations— am not looking at any computer model predictions or outlooks!

Expected precipitation impacts based on past La Niñas

Here is the expected La Niña pattern for precipitation over the US (footnote #2).