The weather guys think they've figured out El Niño and La Niña, the two Pacific water patterns which effect our climate here in the United States and, I suppose, in other parts of the world. La Niña is the "unusually" cool water around the Pacific equator and contrasts with El Niño's "unusually" warm water around the Pacific equator. I'm not certain why they use the term "unusual" for both of the two obvious patterns. I suppose it is possible that some year we will hear about La Nada, in which there will be tepid, normal, usual, and boring water around the Pacific equator. How that water will effect our climate, I don't know. I suspect, however, it will eventually be shown that there is some correlation between La Nada and today's television programming.
The Pacific Ocean has a large amount of water, and water can hold a lot of energy as heat. It is easy to see how the water temperature measured in the Pacific Ocean can have a direct impact on, or be a good measure of, current climate in other areas of this planet. The government's meterologists, who have a few decades of Pacific Ocean data on which to base their predictions, are making a
"strong" one for this winter in the Southwest: Less than normal snow and rain and above average temperatures. La Niña was with us last year and they are predicting a winter pattern similar to last year's, for December, January, and February.
In my area of the southwest, Northeastern New Mexico, we've had an above average amount of precipitation for the year, over 17 inches compared with a total average of 14 inches. But in the winter months, as I remember it, this area was dry. Our relative deluge came in the spring and ended about the time high school graduated, when we got two, instead of our normal one, rain.
So what does this prediction do for us? For one thing, La Niña isn't the only factor that influences our weather. In one-fifth of the 20 La Niña falls and winters since 1892, Albuquerque has NOT experienced below average precipitation, according to the Albuquerque Journal's paraphrasing of Charlie Liles of the National Weather Service in that city. Charlie hasn't told us what accounts for that one in five occurrence of average or better, however. And, without that knowledge, we're forced to admit that dependable odds of four out of five are better than what we'll get at most race tracks.
