The short-lived reign of La Niña has come to an end.
As CNN Weather reports, La Niña – a natural climate pattern that can influence weather worldwide – arrived at the start of this year but had a very short and odd life. The atmosphere first started to take on a La Niña look last fall, but the cooler than average ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean that typically mark its arrival didn’t get with the program until the end of the year. Once they finally did, they only maintained La Niña levels for a few months.
As The Hill reports, now the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Climate Prediction Center has announced that this weak La Niña that’s been with us since winter has officially faded, leaving us in “ENSO-neutral” conditions. Now, neither La Niña nor its counterpart El Niño are present and a so-called neutral phase has begun. This situation is affectionately nicknamed La Nada, in that neither La Niña nor El Niño is present. This neutral phase is forecast to last through the rest of spring, summer and into at least early fall.
Forecasters closely monitor La Niña and El Niño because they influence global weather in a way that’s largely consistent and predictable well in advance. But according to CNN Weather, La Niña’s demise doesn’t flip an on-off switch in the atmosphere. Its fingerprints will linger even if they could be limited by its duration and strength, according to Michelle L’Heureux, a climate scientist with the Climate Prediction Center. It’s “very difficult” to quantify exactly how long and to what extent La Niña’s ghost could stick around, L’Heureux said.
Neutral “La Nada” times can make predicting seasonal weather a bit more challenging. “Without an El Niño or La Niña signal present, other, less predictable, climatic factors will govern fall, winter and spring weather conditions,” climatologist Bill Patzert of with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a NASA post. What could happen to the weather in the coming months without La Niña and El Niño is less clear-cut, but forecasters are already making predictions.
What a La Nada Hurricane Season Could Look Like
There will not be a clear influence from El Niño or La Niña to help guide forecasts on how this upcoming Atlantic hurricane season – which starts in June – will unfold. Neutral conditions basically have coin-flip odds to persist through the peak of hurricane season this year, which stretches from mid-August to mid-October.
La Niña typically leads to a much more active hurricane season while El Niño is more prone to suppressing hurricane activity – except for in 2023. Forecasters need to factor in other influences without either heavy-hitter. Lingering abnormal ocean warmth and a planet warming due to fossil fuel pollution have at least one group of experts thinking this hurricane season will be a busy one.
Oceans are incredibly slow to cool, especially since about 90% of the world’s excess heat produced by burning planet-heating fossil fuels are stored in them. Global ocean temperatures were at record highs for large parts of 2023 and 2024.
El Niño transitioned to neutral conditions shortly before the start of last year’s incredibly active hurricane season. Extremely warm oceans churned out 18 named storms, including 11 hurricanes. Five of those hurricanes – including now retired Helene and Milton – slammed into the US. Neutral conditions also offer a somewhat muddled influence on upcoming temperature and precipitation patterns in the US, especially during the summer, but there’s still a lot of time for forecasters to zero in.
Temps Looking to Be Above Average for Spring and Summer
The latest forecasts from the Climate Prediction Center show plenty of above-average warmth coming through the reminder of spring and into summer. Above average temperatures are forecast nearly everywhere in the US aside from the Pacific Northwest and parts of the Northern Tier through June. Above average temperatures could spread across the entire Lower 48 for summer.
Temperatures continue to rise globally, and there are more frequent and extreme bouts of heat from planet-warming pollution. That, along with an expansive drought in parts of the US, are the reasons for the toasty forecast over the next several months. Prolonged heat and dry weather tend to get stuck in a loop where each factor continuously makes the other worse – something that unfolded to the extreme last summer.
Regular La Niña Patterns Likely to Return in Fall
Starting in the fall, the chances of La Niña or El Niño returning start to grow. At this point, a La Niña winter looks more likely than El Niño for late 2025 and early 2026.
A typical La Niña winter brings dry conditions across the southern half of the country, with extra rain and snow up north (especially in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley). El Niño years are the opposite: cold, wet winters in California and the Southern U.S., but warm, dry conditions for the Pacific Northwest and the Ohio Valley.
Whether we’re in a La Niña year, El Niño year or neither is determined by sea surface temperatures near the equator over the Pacific Ocean. The temperature of the water and air above it can shift the position of the jet stream, which in turn impacts the types of weather observed on land.
—
Photo Credit: FrankHH / Shuttersock.com