La Niña is looming large. Here’s what that means for winter in the Northwest
Western Washington is looking at a cold, wet winter with heavy mountain snow because of a La Niña weather pattern that’s developing thousands of miles away.
“For a lot of folks, La Niña is good news, particularly if you like to shred on Mount Baker,” said Nick Bond, a University of Washington research scientist and the state climatologist.
“I think we can reasonably expect that we will get that kind of weather, especially after the first of the year,” Bond told The Bellingham Herald.
Steve Reedy, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Seattle, said NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center sees a 75% chance of a La Niña, which is a cooling of Pacific Ocean surface temperatures off equatorial South America.
For the Northwest, that means colder average temperatures and above-average precipitation, Reedy told The Herald.
But whether that translates into lowland snow requires other factors, such as Arctic high pressure to push freezing air south from the Fraser River Valley of British Columbia.
“Getting snow into the lowlands is always a tricky thing, but we’re more keyed up,” Reedy said.
Bond said “snow is a good thing” for the North Cascades in several ways — apart from exciting winter sports enthusiasts.
A healthy snowpack provides water for forests, habitat for fish and water for farmers, and is a welcome respite from the effects of climate change, he said.
“La Niña can kind of counteract the slow warming trend that is occurring in the Pacific Northwest,” he said.
This story was originally published September 30, 2020 at 2:00 PM.
