Sioux Falls, South Dakota — Earlier this year, on one of the first days of fall, we told you that experts were starting to think that La Niña was not going to happen this winter.
La Niña is a cooling of the water in the equatorial Pacific that occurs at irregular intervals and is associated with widespread changes in weather patterns. The opposite of La Niña is El Niño, which is a warming of those waters.
Experts are now backtracking a little, as cooler water in the equatorial Pacific has developed. As of today, NOAA says La Niña conditions are present and have about a 55 percent chance of persisting through the winter of 2016-17. We are currently in what they call a “La Niña Advisory.”
Warning Coordination Meteorologist Todd Heitkamp at the Sioux Falls office of the National Weather Service tells us what that means.
Heitkamp says that conditions have changed a little in the last two months.
He says at this point he would predict that if the weather is colder and snowier than normal, it won’t be MUCH colder and snowier in our area. But time will tell.
He says, however, that the longer these fairly nice conditions hang on, the shorter the “winter” will be.
