El Niño is ending soon. ‘La Nada’ is up next

(NEXSTAR) – The end of the strong El Niño winter is in sight. National forecasters announced Thursday that El Niño is likely to fade away between April and June.

The forecast shows strong signs El Niño is already weakening, the Climate Prediction Center said.

What comes after that is likely to be neither El Niño nor La Niña. Instead, we’ll be in a phase affectionately nicknamed “La Nada.”

The more technical name is “ENSO-neutral,” characterized by the absence of both El Niño and La Niña. 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.

“It’s like driving without a decent road map,” he explained.

“The crystal ball is even blurrier than usual,” Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center, told Nexstar.

But it doesn’t appear we’ll be looking into the blurry crystal ball very long. The Climate Prediction Center said La Niña is looking increasingly likely to kick in sometime over the summer.

“Even though forecasts made through the spring season tend to be less reliable, there is a historical tendency for La Niña to follow strong El Niño events,” the Climate Prediction Center said Thursday. “Even as the current El Niño weakens, impacts on the United States could persist through April 2024.”

El Niño years tend to bring cold, wet winters to California and the Southern U.S., but warm, dry conditions for the Pacific Northwest and the Ohio Valley. La Niña tends to bring the opposite: dry conditions for the whole Southern half of the country, but colder, wetter weather for the Pacific Northwest.

La Niña years also often correspond with busy and especially destructive hurricane seasons.

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.