Milder, wetter than normal winter on tap for NM

Weak El Niño weather pattern to blame for forecast

A weak El Niño weather pattern could bring milder and wetter than average conditions to New Mexico this winter, according to the NOAA Climate Prediction Center’s winter outlook for December through February.

That would mean good news for the drought-stricken Land of Enchantment.

“We find ourselves on the verge of El Niño this year, with the equatorial Pacific ocean recently warming to levels close to the minimum threshold,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, in a telephone briefing with reporters on Thursday. “There’s currently an El Niño Watch in place with a 70 to 75 percent chance that El Niño will develop during the next few months.”

Although meteorologists anticipate a weak El Niño, the precipitation outlook favors wetter than average conditions for New Mexico. Drought improvement is likely for the state as well as in Arizona and southern sections of Utah and Colorado. Drier-than-average conditions are most likely in parts of the northern Rockies.

El Niño, meaning “The Little Boy,” or “Christ Child” in Spanish, is an ocean-atmosphere climate interaction that is linked to periodic warming in sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific.

During the winter, typical El Niño conditions in the U.S. can include wetter-than-average precipitation in the South and drier conditions in parts of the North.

No part of the country is favored to have below-average temperatures this winter, Halpert said.

NOAA’s seasonal outlooks give the likelihood that temperatures and precipitation will be above-, near- or below-average, and how drought conditions are expected to change, but the outlook does not project seasonal snowfall accumulations.

The next winter outlook update from the College Park, Md.-based Climate Prediction Center is expected Nov. 15.