NOAA Winter Outlook: What To Expect In NorCal

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Dry and unseasonably warm conditions are likely to push into the holiday season and beyond in California, according to the latest update from the national Climate Prediction Center.

Very little rain is expected to fall across the state as lingering La Niña conditions are forecast to keep the region dry from December through February, according to an update published Nov. 17 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service.

“It should be no surprise that the winter outlook is consistent with typical La Niña impacts, which include a general warmer and drier south, and cooler and wetter north," Jon Gottschalck, chief of the climate center’s operational prediction branch, told the Los Angeles Times.

December, January and February are typically the state's wettest months, producing half of its annual rainfall while Sierra snowpack helps to store water supplies year round. But a U.S. winter outlook published by the agency in late October spells trouble for the drought-stricken state.

"Another dry winter is certainly not going to be good news for California," Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center told the Los Angeles Times.

Southern California — from Santa Barbara down to San Diego and Riverside counties — has the highest chance of a dry winter as a result of this persistent weather pattern.

Meanwhile, the 90-day outlook map shows the northern half of the state in white, which means the region will have equal chances of a dry or wet winter.

A seasonal temperature outlook for the same period indicates that the majority of counties on the central and southern ends of California will experience warmer than average weather.

For the Bay Area and further north, the outlook map says the chances of a warmer winter are just slightly higher than a cold winter.

"The forecast of equal chances in [Northern California] does in fact mean that current climate signals and historical forecast reliability in your region don't allow for a confident or reliable forecast shift in climatological probabilities," Jon Gottschalk, chief of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center's forecasting branch, told SF GATE. "So the odds at the current time for your area are 33% for each category. No clear shift either way unfortunately. Your area is notorious for high variability or outcomes during La Nina event winters and this is why equal chances is forecast."

If meteorologist predictions come true, it would mean that the state will endure a third of La Niña. It would be only the third time the weather phase has stuck around for three years since record-keeping began in the early 1950s.

And it isn't just the Golden State that's expected to feel the effects of La Niña. Every state in the country is expected to feel hotter temperatures to varying degrees.

For the month of October, elevated temperatures made California the seventh warmest state on record for that period, said Ellen Bartow-Gillies a scientist at NOAA during the agency's monthly climate briefing on Thursday.

"The October precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 1.66 inches, which is a half inch below average, ranking in the driest third of the historical record," she said.

The Golden State also recorded its 11th driest October this year.

La Niña is a cooler weather phase, opposite of its El Niño counterpart. Together El Nino, La Nina and the neutral condition are called ENSO, which stands for El Nino Southern Oscillation, and they have one of the largest natural effects on climate, at times augmenting and other times dampening the big effects of human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas, scientists have said.

"It is exceptional to have three consecutive years with a La Nina event. Its cooling influence is temporarily slowing the rise in global temperatures, but it will not halt or reverse the long-term warming trend," the World Meteorological Organization's Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said.

La Niña is expected to worsen drought-ravaged California despite September's tropical storm and some sporadic rain in October and November.

Another season of La Niña is also expected to limit the likelihood of atmospheric rivers — storm systems from which California typically gets heavy rainfall.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, most of the state is under severe drought conditions, with a cluster of central counties experiencing exceptional drought conditions, the highest level on the ranking system. Dozens of other counties running through inland central California were under extreme drought.

“We’re going on our third year of this extreme drought for much of the western U.S., with the extreme drought currently focused over much of California, the Great Basin and extending northward into parts of Oregon,” Brad Pugh, operational drought lead with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said during a news briefing in October, the Times reported. “In terms of impacts, it’s adversely affecting agriculture, also increasing the wildfire danger and even has impacts on tourism.”

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