Atmospheric conditions will be different this winter than last, with a likely switch from El Niño to La Niña, but it may not make much difference in terms of temperature and precipitation.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration put out its winter forecast Thursday, which calls for the middle part of the country, including Nebraska, to have an equal chance of above- or below-average temperatures and precipitation.
Though La Niña tends to mean a more northerly storm track, this winter's forecast La Niña, "is likely to be a weak, slower-duration event," said Jon Gottschalck, NOAA's operational prediction branch chief.
That means the storm track will likely stay far to the north, affecting mostly the Pacific Northwest and the northern Great Plains.
Nebraska is smack dab between the areas where La Niña is expected to have the most impact, leaving it unclear as to what conditions the state might see.
It's also not uncommon for La Niñas to produce wildly different winter conditions in Nebraska.
For example, the winters of 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 were both La Niña winters. The first winter produced nearly 50 inches of snow in Lincoln and had a very warm December and January followed by one of the coldest Februaries ever. The second winter produced a very warm December, close-to-average temperatures in January and February and just over 5 inches of snow, the least amount ever recorded.
Eric Hunt, assistant extension educator of Agricultural Meteorology and Climate Resilience at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said La Niña winters tend to bring the state more temperature swings from warm to cold, with long cold stretches possible. He said they also tend to bring more frequent but lighter snowfall events.
Another winter forecast released this week by Accuweather is mostly in line with the NOAA forecast, although it predicts slightly warmer and drier conditions for Southeast Nebraska.
Neither forecast is very optimistic about the prospect for alleviating drought. In fact, the NOAA forecast predicts drought conditions will stay in place or worsen across much of Nebraska.
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The current dry conditions — Lincoln has now gone 23 days without measurable precipitation and has received only 1.7 inches since Aug. 1 — have caused drought to spread rapidly across the state.
According to the latest drought monitor released Thursday by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, nearly half the state is now in severe drought, up from about one-third last week and just 15% two weeks ago.
Moderate drought covers about 83% of the state, which is double just three weeks ago.
Much of the U.S. is forecast to see either continuing or increasing drought over the winter, according to NOAA.
“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,†said Brad Pugh, operational drought lead with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “And the winter precipitation outlook does not bode well for widespread relief.â€
Hunt said a La Niña winter typically does not bring the kind of conditions to Nebraska necessary to alleviate drought.
"We don’t tend to be that wet during La Niña (or during late fall and winter in general), and given the deficits we are accumulating, it is improbable that we see significant drought improvement over the next several months," he said.
Hunt said the state could potentially get enough snowfall during the winter to keep drought conditions from worsening, but to produce any significant improvement, there would need to be "persistent deep troughs in the western U.S. that help spin up storms off the Front Range with high pressure off the Southeast coast to pump Gulf moisture up. Then we would be talking about a very active, stormy pattern."
"Given the way we seem to swing more often from one extreme to the other with the climate warming, I won’t totally discount that," he said. "But there are no immediate signs of that occurring."