Northwest Iowa — Some experts are saying long-range weather maps are starting to show a pretty good likelihood of a La Niña pattern this winter.
We talked to Mike Gillispie, the Service Hydrologist at the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, which covers our area. He agrees with the other experts.
There are a lot of “ifs” at play here, and Gillispie says this is for the winter as a whole, not specific events. But he gives us a general idea of the possibilities at play — if a La Niña develops for the upcoming winter.
So for our area, it could be colder, and it’s slightly more likely that we could have a drier winter — if La Niña develops, and IF it does the same things that it has been known to do, in the places it has done so in the past. He says he would think about it as weighting the dice toward a certain outcome.
For whatever it’s worth, last winter there was also a weak to moderate La Niña.
