Norman, Oklahoma — A slowly developing La Niña is favored to influence conditions for the upcoming winter across most of the country, according to NOAA’s U.S. Winter Outlook, which has been released by the Climate Prediction Center — a division of NOAA’s National Weather Service.
The outlook is for December 2024 through February 2025 and contains information on likely conditions throughout the country for temperature, precipitation, and drought.
This winter, NOAA predicts wetter-than-average conditions for the entire northern tier of the continental U.S., particularly in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes region.
But Brad Pugh, operational drought lead with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center says, “Unfortunately, after a brief period in the spring of 2024 with minimal drought conditions across the country, more than a quarter of the land mass in the continental U.S. is currently in at least a moderate drought, and the winter precipitation outlook does not bode well for widespread relief.”
Wetter-than-average conditions are most likely in the Great Lakes states, including the northeast two-thirds of Minnesota. But our tri-state area is in an area of equal chances of above and below normal precipitation. Drought conditions are expected to persist across the Great Plains.
Temperature-wise, the winter forecast says that northwest Iowa could see below-normal temperatures. Our area is right at the very edge of that prediction, however, and we are next to an area where there are equal chances that winter temperatures will be either warmer or colder than normal.
