In its monthly update issued this morning, the government’s Climate Prediction Center says the La Nina in the equatorial Pacific could intensify and persist through the winter.
While this is not encouraging for the region’s snow fans, it it is ominous for residents of the Southeastern United States.
La Nina, a cooling of surface waters, is well-correlated with dryness in the Southeast, and the weekly drought update, also issued this morning, shows large portions of the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee already in a state of “exceptional drought.”
If you click on the drought map, you’ll see that South Jersey and a piece of south-central Pennsylvania are in the “abnormally dry” category, but that’s nothing compared to the Southeast.
As El Nino/La Nina expert James J. O’Brien, of Florida State University, noted in the weather story in today’s Inquirer, the cooling in the Pacific correlates with high pressure that keeps the Southeast dry and suppresses coastal storms that affect the I-95 corridor.
The climate center notes that La Nina has reached "moderate" strength and some computer models want to nudge it into the "strong" category.
La Nina is a big reason why the seasonal outlooks generally call for a benign winter around here. However, as you'll see below (see "La Nina Winters"), it can snow when the equatorial Pacific is chilly.
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