Wednesday January 25, 2023
KOMO —
La Niña brings cooler than normal and wetter than normal winter weather for the Pacific Northwest…usually.
Cold storms with high amounts of rain and mountain snow, along with a few more rounds of lowland snow, keep the precipitation above average and temperatures below.
Cooler and wetter than the average for the Pacific Northwest, La Niña also creates drier than average winters over the southwest United States; most often, a drought builds.
Not this year! Our rare, third-consecutive La Niña winter has been filled with variability.
La Niña’s large fluctuations in the Jetstream, which acts as the steering current for storms, carried numerous winter storms southward into California, dousing drought levels to non-existence and deepening the mountain snowpack of the Southwest.