First Warning: Flip back to La Niña possible by this summer

AUSTIN (KXAN) — We're in the middle of El Niño, but signs are already pointing toward a complete reversal in just a few months. The Climate Prediction Center's latest ENSO (El Niño - Southern Oscillation) forecast now has La Niña as the most likely pattern by this summer.

KXAN Meteorologist Nick Bannin spoke with Tom Di Liberto, a climate scientist with NOAA's Office of Communications about the state of El Niño now and the changes ahead.

Bannin: We just got a brand new update about the future of ENSO. Could we really see a flip back to La Niña this summer?

Di Liberto: Yeah, that's what the outlook is saying. So we're expecting El Niño to continue through the winter, transition into what we call ENSO Neutral sometime this spring. But then yeah, the chances of La Niña bouncing right back up as you move into the summertime.

Bannin: How unusual is it to go from El Niño and so quickly get back to La Niña again?

Di Liberto: This is actually something that we see quite often with these El Niño events. They peak, then they end pretty rapidly and then it's not unusual to then see things flip back into a La Niño pattern in the Pacific Ocean after El Niño.

Bannin: La Niña wouldn't be good for us here in Central Texas, we really need the rain and that (La Niña) typically brings drier weather for a lot of the South.

Di Liberto: Yes, that is very, very true. Although we always say that Mother Nature always holds the upper hand. So sometimes Mother Nature can override even the impacts of El Niño or La Niña.

Bannin: Central Texas was really hoping that this El Niño winter that we're in now would bring us much more rain than it has. Why does El Niño not always mean rain for where we are?

Di Liberto: So El Nino is basically just kind of changing the background state of the atmosphere. But there's still the randomness of weather that can have a larger influence on what happens on a week to week or month basis across the United States, especially as it relates to the southern tip of the United States during El Niño. Now, in general, normally, that area of the country tends to receive above average rainfall, but not every El Niño sees that.

But one thing that we've seen is that unlike previous El Niños, where we see warm waters in the [eastern] Pacific Ocean, and then cooler waters in the western Pacific Ocean, the fact that the oceans are so warm everywhere could potentially have an impact in weakening that connection to the mid latitudes where we live. And if you weaken that connection that basically can then mean, the normal things we see with El Niño aren't as likely as they have been in the past.