From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
La Niña, associated with cool water over the tropical Pacific, has a significant impact on Northwest weather, influencing temperature, precipitation, and snowfall.
As described below, La Niña has strengthened recently, and some decidedly La Niña weather is now in the forecasts.
As noted in previous blogs, La Niña is associated with cooler-than-normal ocean temperatures over the central tropical Pacific, known as the Nino 3.4 area (see below)
According to the latest observations, we are about to transition from a weak to a moderate La Niña (see figure below). This figure shows the difference from normal of the temperatures in the Nino 3.4 area, with blue colors indicating below-normal temperatures. A moderate La Nina is associated with a cool temperature anomaly larger than .9C.
We are now crossing this threshold to moderate La Niña conditions (see below).
The recent NOAA El Nino/La Niña forecast indicates continued La Niña conditions into mid-winter. If anything, it’s erring on the warm side.
La Niña winters tend to be associated with an upper-level ridge of high pressure over the Gulf of Alaska and associated cold northerly flow over the Northwest (see below). La Niña winters tend to be cooler than normal over the Northwest, generally with more snow than typical.
Occasionally, the jet stream breaks through underneath the ridge with a strong cyclone/wind event.
Now, let’s look ahead over the next week or so, considering forecast models’ predictions.
The forecast of the upper level (500 hPa, about 18,000 ft) heights/pressures for Saturday afternoon shows a big ridge offshore and northwesterly flow over Washington. Classic La Niña pattern.
Tuesday morning? Very similar. La Niña upper air pattern
With a La Niña pattern with northerly flow from Alaska in place, temperatures should be a bit colder than normal over the Northwest, as illustrated by the forecast temperatures at SeaTac over the next few days. Normal is around 50F…. predicted temperatures are several degrees cooler.
The forecast surface (2-m above the ground) temperatures on Sunday at 7 AM indicate that much of the state will be below freezing, with most of the Cascades and eastern Washington in the 20s. (see below)
Below-freezing temperatures will also occur over the eastern part of Puget Sound country. Keep in mind that temperatures could be even cooler at the surface.
So be ready for the first frost of the season!
Finally, the latest forecast of temperature (actually the difference of temperature from normal) from the highly skillful European Center extended forecasting system through January 13th, suggests colder than normal temperatures for the next month and a half.
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I read this La Nina update sitting in my upstairs office in Mendoza, Argentina. I can look out the window toward the west, the Andes Mountains, and see the La Nina effect. Remember the saying “Good Girls go to heaven, Bad Girls go everywhere else”? La Nina is a Bad Girl.
I wonder what implications for us here in Seden?
My understanding is they are pretty much the same as for here in Centerville.
Good question, with El Niño and La Niña directly affecting the Pacific, it’s hard to say how much will propagate to the Baltic. Changes in the Gulf Stream would be more important.
I wonder what implications for us here in Sweden?
Children aren’t going to know what snow is – David Viner…
The Independent is a left wing socialist rag, promoting the warming scam at every turn.
Thermometers are also notoriously left wing.
Fortunately, left wing and right wing newspapers and thermometers have no effect on whether it will snow or not.
So are climate models (and most climate scientists).
They do in Chicago.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/weather/2025/11/30/snow-storm-record
Wow, that comment dates this article even if the date wasn’t on it (March 2000).
The ten warmest years on record in the UK have all occurred since that article was written, with 2003 in 10th place!
The only year from the 1990s still inside the top 15 warmest years in the UK now is 1997, which is 15th warmest.
Models, readings from airports and infilling (making up values). Prove me wrong.
God exists. Prove me wrong.
It must have been pretty cold before those hottest years.
No, it was just a temperature unaffected by recent man-made warming influences.
Well, the BOM here in Australia have predicted that we won’t have a wet summer despite it being usual for La Niña conditions. We’ve had damp winters and semi-damp summers for a few years now.
Accordingly, the entire east coast has been inundated ever since!
Here in the Hunter, been rather dry for the last two months after a very wet 6-7 month period
Regular grass smoke in the air from fires.
Fortunately none have got too far out of control, just a few hectares here and there with a couple of larger one up to a few hundred hectares.
Fires Near Me
The monsoon seems to have arrived in Queensland. Perhaps it’ll come further south….
Yep, that seems to be the situation 🙂
Monsoon pushing central Australian air over the eastern coast
According to UAH, 2025 so far has been the second-warmest year on record for Australia, fractionally behind 2024. October 2025 was the warmest October on record.
Time to throw UAH under the bus, mate?
How does that compare with 1934?
As you know (or you wouldn’t have asked), UAH only runs from ~1979.
Unfortunately, it also seems to be the only data set you self-proclaimed ‘Skeptics’ pay any heed to.
So, to re-phrase, do you accept that 2025 is, so far (to Oct 2025), the warmest year on the UAH record?
Warmest year on record ‘for Australia’, that is…
BRRRRRRRR!!!
It’s exceptionally cold for the date outside of Boulder this morning. I really appreciate natural gas.
Even socialists feel cold. Bernie’s going to need a hat.
One question Rogan needs to ask Bernie is how he plans to build wind turbines, solar panels and batteries without using fossil fuel powered machinery since wind and solar can’t generate enough energy to power the machinery used in their production.
Not to mention, the flexible and lightweight materials, lubricants, insulation for wires, printed circuit boards, capacitor dielectrics, etc., and then there is the fact that coal is used not only to supply the energy for solar panel manufacturing but also for the chemical reduction of silica to silicon.
Steel can’t be made without carbon, neither can, get this, carbon fibers. Even most cement for concrete is produced and certainly transported with or via fossil fuels.
In my opinion, Sen. Sanders readily accepts the climate alarmist narrative as genuine for two reasons.
(1) As a socialist, he has complete faith in government, so he isn’t going to question anything the U.N. says about climate. The notion that the U.N. could corrupt science for its own activist ideological purposes (global wealth redistribution) never occurs to him.
(2) Again, as a socialist, he is ideological opposed to a free market (capitalist) economy. Thus, the climate alarmist narrative provides him with confirmation bias that supports his ideological opposition to capitalism. “See there”, says Bernie, “that’s one of the reasons why the climate crisis has to be true.” Sorry Senator, but that line of thinking doesn’t make the alarmist narrative scientifically sound.
Funny how one can be a millionaire socialist enjoying the fruits of capitalism while demanding others abandon it.
Mark Whitney “Funny how one can be a millionaire socialist enjoying the fruits of capitalism while demanding others abandon it.”
For politicians like Bernie Sanders, it’s all about acquiring money and power in roughly equal portions. This has been a winning formula for politicians in the US Northeast for a century at least.
We now better understand these impacts and reproduce many of them in our climate models.
…
El Niño years are one factor that can increase the risk of colder winters in the UK. – Met Office
Funnily enough the MO doesn’t have a readily available spiel on La Niña, presumably it will be wetter and warmer in the UK this winter? If that’s the case it’s more bad news for the 6th formers at the Grauniad
“Water shortages could derail UK’s net zero plans, study finds
…researchers assessed plans across England’s five largest industrial clusters in Humberside, north-west England, the Tees Valley, the Solent and the Black Country, to determine how much water would be needed to reach net zero and whether the UK’s future water supply could meet this demand.
…
Decarbonisation within the Humberside industrial cluster could push Anglian Water into water deficit by 2030, leading to a shortage of 130m litres a day by 2050”
How do they know this?
“In his model…”
It doesn’t occur to them that we haven’t built a reservoir in decades while the population has gone up by millions. Why does net zero need even more water? Wildfires from rewilding?
Well the Havant Thicket reservoir is already under construction and will be completed in a few years and several more are planned.
In a few years time?
“while the population has gone up by millions”
Very funny stuff. Next excuse, please.
Story tip: Smell the coffee…
Cambridge University is among several top universities across the nation holding talks with Reform UK amid fears Nigel Farage’s party may lead a Donald Trump-style crackdown on elite institutions.
Leaked discussions from Cambridge chiefs revealed they had spoken with “key people” within Reform to learn about the “possible implications of a Reform government”.
…
Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, Professor Deborah Prentice, said colleagues from other Russell Group universities had been “meeting with key people from Reform” and that “we’ve had people” doing the same.
“A number of you … have wanted to be talking about the possible implications of a Reform government for the University of Cambridge, and that is something that the sector is now beginning to take up as an issue. – GBN
In fairness to Cambridge, not only is it among the wokest of the woke universities, it’s the alma mater of our most notorious traitors.
I wonder who she plagiarized?
You mean the ones who sold out to… the Russians?
Hopefully it is going to snow like hell here in eastern US!(yes, my neighbors and friends hate me)
Basically this article just brings to the front just how bad our forecasting models are. I’ve seen everything from La Nada winter conditions to a weak La Niña to now a stronger La Niña over the past year. Then we get the obligatory La Niña NA winter map next to a stratospheric warming one which, according to some, may accentuate the La Niña setup or negate it.
Now we have some very active geothermal energy being put into the system with a couple of volcanoes going off no one expected. I think the best winter forecast is expect the best but prepare for the worst. Three months from now here in the SE US, Spring will be happening and so will the summer forecasts of intense heat and no rain because the models say so.
Robacock:
The 3 VEI4 volcanic eruptions in May of this year are the cause of the currently developing La Nina, because of their injection of dimming SO2 aerosols into the stratosphere.
Volcanos typically take 14 to 16 months to reach their point of lowest temperature effect, so the La Nina will continue to worsen, and persist for about 2 years.
So prepare for the worst.
Tracing climate changes to a given volcano….is like trying to determine which mosquito bite on an elephant’s butt caused the incidence of elephant stampedes in the world to increase as determined by zookeepers everywhere.
DMacKenzie: “Tracing climate changes to a given volcano….is like trying to determine which mosquito bite on an elephant’s butt caused the incidence of elephant stampedes in the world to increase as determined by zookeepers everywhere.”
Not to worry. Climate activists say that in fifty years time, natural elephants will all be gone because of a climate-driven Elephant Mass Extinction Event (EMEE) — one among thousands of such climate-driven mass extinction events which will occur if the US doesn’t reach Net Zero by 2050 and the entire world by 2075.
This prescient Gary Larson cartoon from 1986 offers a solution if all our natural elephants disappear — an LI-battery-powered AI-driven robotic elephant such as the one illustrated here:
As is true with all large LI-powered mechanical devices, a few robotic elephants here and there will catch fire and burn up in a cloud of toxic smoke — leaving tens if not hundreds of robotic elephant watchers injured or dead in its wake.
Not in the case of the Hunga Tonga eruption. It caused heavy rainfall all over the planet for 4 years so far.
Another evidence-free soundbite from ‘soundbite-Mike’
DMacKenzie
NO, your analogy is not supported by FACTS
Essentially all La Ninas are preceded by a VEI4 or larger volcanic eruption that injects cooling Volcanic SO2 aerosols into the stratosphere.–and after about 2 years, results in a volcanic-induced El Nino.
I’m skeptical.
This is wrong. La Niña is not strengthening. Quite the contrary, this week La Niña is weakening. We will have again a neutral year as last winter.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ONI_v5.php
This is what I forecasted and so far it appears I will be right again this year.
Javier:
What you say is not correct
See https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysus/ocean
Javier:
Sorry: https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean
Russia just recorded a record low of minus 50C.
Arctic ice at an 11 year high.
Record cold in India and Turkey.
The Danes aren’t so sure Arctic ice is at an 11 year high.
https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php
MASIE is showing 2025 extent below the last 4-5 years.
Don’t know where WFMike got his info.
This is just nonsense, otherwise you would have links to back it up, right?
Don’t worry, no one here will check – they’re ‘skeptiks’!
Two replies to Mike prove you wrong… Again.
Are you agreeing then that ‘Mike’s’ claims are garbage?
Russia didn’t just record a new lowest temperature.
Arctic sea-ice is *not* at an 11-year high.
There has *not* been record cold in India and Turkey.
Pure gibberish.
Right?
OMG! This morning in North Seattle we had frost on the roofs and windshields! This could be the start of Global Cooling.
Global warming at its finest.
Global warming is real!
🙂
Global warming and global cooling have happened many times over the lifetime of the earth, according to geologists who live in the Holocene..
The same cannot be said about humans, and nobody ever does.
I suppose I should have posted the /sarc instead of the 🙂
“If anything, it is erring on the warm side” – perpetually.
They may be right, they may be wrong. With weather, it’s always wait and see…and then they will tell you with (near) 100% accuracy what really happened…
With all the computer firepower they have nowadays they still often can’t tell me if it will rain, or not, tomorrow. They’ll say 47% chance which is telling me, toss a coin and that’s just as predictive as billions of dollars of computers running computer models doing megaflops operations per second.
Do the winter weather season predictions have as much “success” as the hurricane season predictions? We’re in big trouble…