Weather Wise-November 2022

1. We are in strong La Niña now, but will likely see it fade late this winter and early spring.

2. This transition makes it tough to use an analog year much beyond March or April

3. We may also have an atmospheric hangover from La Niña, before we transition to a possible El Niño. This may aid to linger dryness in the center part of the country.

4. There will not be a perfect analog year to what we are going to see. However, the current sea surface temperature anomaly setup is pretty close to that of 2020. See below:

2020 October                                                                                                          

2022 October

I'm not saying we'll see the exact same weather going forward, but the sea surface temperature anomaly maps match up pretty closely. The difference in where these two years were heading is pretty significant, as we continued La Niña for quite some time after October 2020 and we are likely coming out of a long La Niña, as we enter 2023. At any rate, I wanted to show you that comparison and it is one of the analog years I feel matches pretty closely for the next few months.

Here are the rest of the analog years and the average precipitation and temperature anomalies that occurred from November through April of those fall, winter and early spring seasons.

Highlights:

Average to wetter than average for the Pacific Northwest, Northern Rockies, Northern Plains and parts of the Midwest/Great Lakes

Drier than average for California eastward through Texas and the Southeast U.S.

Colder than average for the northern tier of the country, with much colder than average across parts of Montana, Dakotas and Great Lakes

I think the Pacific Northwest, Northern Rockies and Northern Plains could have a pretty serious winter, with more snow than last year and more sustained cold. At least, that is largely the signal that I am getting. We need to put some snow on the ground in Canada to get this going, but some areas will get that done this weekend and early next week.

As I have lamented, IF the PDO does not warm from its current readings, then I would expect drier than average conditions to continue across much of the Central/Southern/Western Plains...even after La Niña goes away. That is something significant I will be watching in the weeks and months to come...

Going forward, we'll get another round of model data in a few weeks and it also gives us time to see how the oceans will be changing...or, if they stay static. I doubt these analog years will change much, given the fact that we are in a strong La Niña right now. You kind of have to start the analog with that condition, or you don't have a good basis to go from... I know more would like to know what happens after spring of 2023, but I'd be lying if I told you I know. I THINK we could see an El Niño develop later in the year, but that is far from being decided right now.