La Nina Returns

While our overall weather pattern will remain fairly quiet for the immediate future, a look way ahead to the upcoming few months reveals that things may grow to become pretty active again over the winter and spring months, thanks in part to the return of La Nina.  La Nina...the "female" counterpart to El Nino, is an overall cooling of the waters of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.  A recent look at sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific show that this climatic setup has returned.

Of course, there are a number of other atmospheric factors that will ultimately determine how our weather unfolds over the winter and spring months, but usually this type of setup brings wetter than average conditions to the Ohio Valley.  La Nina was certainly a contributing factor during last winter's record snowfall across parts of the central U.S., the record flooding across our region last spring, as well as the record number of tornadoes in April.  This will be a story worth following over the coming months, and could lead to more volatile weather during the more active months to come.  The official NWS winter outlook will arrive in mid-October, so it will be interesting to see how this plays into their predictions.  To read more about the latest La Nina information, check out this link:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110908_lanina.html