Last year, the climate phenomenon La Niña messed with everyone’s heads. La Niña conditions mean that the ocean temperature in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean are colder than usual, and this was responsible for (among other things) the uncannily warm winter that the Northeast has been having. Sorry, can’t blame that on climate change! Yet.
NASA’s climate-tracking satellites have picked up indications that this round of La Niña is peaking. For those of us uninterested in geeking out over ocean temperatures, that means that Seattle and the rest of the Pacific Northwest can expect more crazy weather — lots of wet, maybe more snow — and the Southwest will be dry. The lack of water in the Southwest has been going on for longer than this round of La Niña (okay, that one you probably can blame on climate change), but this pattern could make the drought-conditions there worse.
