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Expect cold, wet start to new year |
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December 18, 2016 |
The Columbia River basin states are in for a
cold and wet winter as a result of continuing
influences from the La Nina weather pattern that
builds off colder than normal water temperatures
in the Pacific Ocean.
NOAA and its Climate Prediction Center hosted a
teleconference briefing Thursday on recent
weather conditions along with a three-month
weather outlook.
The Columbia Basin stands out on both counts.
The January through March forecast calls for
below or well-below average temperature in the
northern portions of Washington, Idaho and
Montana, along with above-average precipitation
across all of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and
Montana.
That forecast comes on the heels of one of the
warmest autumns on record for the contiguous
United States, with temperatures that were 4.1
degrees above the 20th century average. November
punctuated the fall with record high
temperatures in many parts of the country.
Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring for
NOAA’s Centers for Environmental Information,
said Idaho had a record November for
warmer-than-average temperatures, while there
were record high temperatures in in parts of
western Montana, Washington and Oregon.
Arndt also noted that Washington had its wettest
autumn on record, while the other Columbia Basin
states also had large areas with “much above
average” precipitation.
Brad Pugh, a meteorologist and season forecaster
with the Climate Prediction Center, said the
forecast for the coming winter months comes with
probabilities that are “very modest” because it
is difficult to project how quickly the La Nina
weather pattern will dissipate.
The consensus among forecasters is that La Nina
has already started to weaken but will persist
through the winter, and it will be followed by
“neutral” influences through the summer.
Forecasters will be watching for signs of an El
Nino pattern emerging. For the Northwest, El
Nino can lead to opposite conditions of warmer
and drier weather.
El Nino and La Nina are known to be powerful
influences on Pacific Northwest, as well as
southwestern states with different results, but
little or no influence on states in between,
such as Colorado. |
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