How 'Strong' El Niño Winter Could Shake Out In CA: 2023 NOAA Outlook

CALIFORNIA — A clearer picture is beginning to take shape of what the season ahead may look like in the Golden State with the unveiling of the annual U.S. Winter Outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This year's assessment notes that this will be the first El Niño winter in four years, following an unusual "three-peat" of La Niñas. While several variables can play a role, El Niño years often spell wetter, cooler weather in the southern tier of the United States, with drier and warmer conditions more common up north.

Those expectations play a role in this year's outlook, which shows promising chances for a wetter winter in most of California. The highest odds are seen in the Bay Area and Central Valley, with probabilities tilting that direction as far north as Eureka, down to just south of Los Angeles.

As for temperatures, forecasters predict a warmer winter for most of California, with the highest probabilities seen in the far north of the state and the lowest in the south. According to The Los Angeles Times, forecasters said that could mean more rain than snow this season, but experts note it's too early to know what aberrations may lay ahead, like the nearly three dozen atmospheric rivers that pummeled California during last year's historic winter.

The Climate Prediction Center favors El Niño conditions sticking around in the Northern Hemisphere through spring, with up to an 85 percent chance for a "strong" event developing between November and January, and a 3 in 10 chance it will be "historically strong." Climatologists note that higher strength increases the chance for anomalies, but does not always equate to notable impacts on local weather.

"It's important to stress that even though we see these general patterns during El Niño and La Niña years, there is still a lot of variability and not every event is going to follow the general pattern," said Julie Kalansky, a climate scientist at UC San Diego. "Last year's La Niña was a perfect example. We'd normally expect dry winter conditions from a La Niña in Southern California but it was wetter than normal. So, the declaration of an El Niño doesn't guarantee that Southern California is going to have a wet, stormy winter, but it does stack the deck in that direction."

Regardless of how things shake out, the winter outlook shows more good news on the drought front in the Golden State. According to the U.S. Drought Outlook, California is the lone western state where drought conditions are not expected anywhere in the November through January period.

NOAA does not include snowfall predictions in the annual outlooks, due to unreliability in forecasting snow more than a week in advance. However, this year a new tool will be available to help the media and members of the public track potential snow and ice risks near them up to seven days in advance.

The Climate Prediction Center updates its three-month outlooks each month, and the next will be available in mid-November.

Here are the highlights from the 2023 U.S. Winter Outlook:

Temperatures

• Warmer-than-average temperatures are favored across the northern tier of the U.S. and much of the Far West.
  • The greatest odds for warmer-than-average conditions are in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and northern New England.
• Near-normal seasonal mean temperatures are most likely for a region from the south-central Rockies to the southern Plains.
• Remaining areas fall into the category of equal chances for below-, near-, or above-average seasonal mean temperatures.

Precipitation

• Wetter-than-average conditions are most likely in northern Alaska, some areas of the West from parts of California to the south-central Rockies, the southern Plains, Gulf Coast, Southeast and lower mid-Atlantic.
• The greatest odds for drier-than-average conditions are forecast in portions of the northern Rockies and central Great Lakes region, especially for Michigan and northern Ohio and Indiana.
• Much of the central portion of the U.S. falls into the category of equal chances for below-, near-, or above-average seasonal total precipitation.

Drought

• Widespread extreme to exceptional drought continues to persist across much of the South, and portions of the central U.S.
• Drought conditions are expected to improve across the Southeast, the Gulf Coast (including the lower Mississippi Valley), and Texas due to the expected wetter-than-average forecast.
• Drought conditions are expected to persist for the northern Rockies, northern Great Plains, and portions of the desert Southwest this winter.
• Drought development could occur in the interior Pacific Northwest given the chance for drier-than-average conditions.
• Drought is likely to persist or develop across Hawaii.