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Although El Nino has brought relief from dry weather in the past, the storms it has brought this time around were too warm to lead to buildup of the snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas, a primary source of water for California.
NOAA is predicting another La Nina this year and says it will impact weather in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin this winter. La Nina weather patterns happen when trade winds are even stronger than usual, pushing more warm water toward Asia and bringing cold water to the surface off of our coast. These cold waters in the Pacific push the jet stream northward. This tends to lead to drought in the southern U.S. and heavy rains and flooding in the Pacific Northwest and Canada.
The La Niña climate pattern, which tends to bring dry conditions to the Southwest, is expected to persist for another year amid the ongoing drought.
This may be bad news for recovering from the ongoing drought, if not necessarily disastrous. But we are most definitely in for another winter of La Niña, which hasn't brought us sufficient rain and snow the past two years.
A series of announcements this week point out the impacts of climate change on warmer temperatures and food and energy security