Here’s what a La Niña winter could mean for US weather
Meteorologists are predicting a weak La Niña will likely occur this winter season, bringing warmer weather to southern states and a cooler, wetter winter to the northwestern US.
There is a 60 percent chance La Niña will emerge this November and stick around through January or March 2025, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The weather event can be expected to disrupt weather patterns across the US and influence how much rain and snow certain regions will see this season. It can also mean a more severe hurricane season, the agency warned.
The last time the Big Apple saw La Niña there were warm conditions and little snow, though forecasters warn anything could happen under the weather event.
What is a La Niña winter
La Niña, or “little girl” in Spanish, refers to the periodic cooling of the Pacific Ocean waters off the coast of South America.
“La Niña means that those temperatures are cooler than average while El Niño is warmer than average. It’s a global pattern that fluctuates from season to season,” Fox Forecast Center Meteorologist Stephanie van Oppen told The Post.
The weather event tends to take place every three to five years. Last year, the US encountered the opposite effect — an El Niño — which brought very little snow on top of warm and wet conditions to the Big Apple.
Although La Niña is a naturally occurring phenomenon, the weather event can “change our weather patterns based on that section of the ocean’s temperature,” van Oppen said.
What does that mean for the US
During La Niña events, the cold waters in the Pacific push the jet stream northward, oftentimes leading to drought in the southern US and heavy rains flooding the northern portion of the country and Canada.
“If we were to see La Niña conditions develop this winter, the southeast could anticipate warmer than average temperatures and a drier than average winter,” van Oppen said. “The northern tier, places like Montana, Colorado and the Midwest, could see cooler than average temperatures.”
“The Pacific Northwest and then into the Great Lakes could also see a wetter than average winter,” van Oppen added.
In New York City, La Niña could mean a variety of things, according to van Oppen, who said it puts the Big Apple in a “boom or bust” scenario.
“It could mean a lot [of snow] or very, very little snow,” van Oppen said.
Historically, La Niña has brought both blizzards and mere inches of snow to the five boroughs, meaning there’s no telling what kind of winter New York City will see.
“It puts us kind of on the bubble of whether or not we get conditions that set up for big snow events, or whether or not we’re kind of stuck in a snow drought,” van Oppen said.
States that could be the most impacted
The Pacific Northwest will likely bear the brunt of La Niña.
“They would be most likely to see above-average snowfall which would likely bring cooler temperatures as well,” van Oppen said.
If La Niña were to occur, states like Oregon, Washington and Idaho would likely see multiple weather systems move across the Pacific Northwest from the Pacific Ocean, bringing heaps of rain and snow.
Those conditions would also have the potential to track across the Great Lake region, though they likely would not be as impacted as the northern West Coast states, van Oppen said.
When was the last time this happened
The last time the US saw La Niña was in the 2022-2023 winter season when it brought warm and wet weather to New York City.
“We only saw 2.3 inches of snowfall in Central Park that entire winter. However, there have been other cases in the past where we have seen really big snows, most notably the 1995-1996 January blizzard which hit Central Park, that was also during a weak La Niña.”
The 2022-2023 season was also the third consecutive year the US saw La Niña conditions, a rare phenomenon meteorologists referred to as the “triple-dip.”
