Good-bye la Nina

Bad Dad does the taxes and I make the tough call of whether we should ski the southern or the northern storm track each winter. Because of the la Nina (a colder than usual pool of water in the equatorial east Pacific near Peru), the northern storm track seemed like a safer bet this year.

But our recent weather doesn't seem like a la Nina. Check out this animation from Unisys.com, a site for professional meteorologists.
See the moisture plume coming from the southwest? That kind of weather pattern can happen any year, but it is less likely during a la Nina year and more likely during an el Nino year. It's like playing with loaded dice. Anyway, that's been happening more often than I would have expected during a la Nina year. (Remember the epic storm in late December?)

Dr Jeff Masters' Wunderblog breaks the news that the la Nina is over.

Take a look at the latest weekly sea surface temperature (SST) and SST anomaly (deviation from climatological mean temps) from NOAA. Notice that the equatorial SST near Peru is slightly warmer than usual this week?
Watch this NOAA animation of global SST anomalies for the last six months. See the waters off the coast of Peru turn from indigo (-2.5 C colder than usual) to yellow (1.0 C warmer than usual) over the last six months? Here's the latest weekly still, but click on the link above to see the full mesmerizing movie.
Hopefully, the abatement of la Nina will bring relief to flood-stricken Australia.

Think snow!