The latest La Nina discussion in NOAA’s Climate blog came out today, and it shows that surprisingly, La Nina strengthened in February instead of weakening as expected. The latest forecasts for La Nina now indicate that it is likely to last into summer 2022. In addition, the predictions indicate that we may go back for a third year of La Nina. Three-peats are not unheard of, but only two have occurred since 1950, so they are definitely not common. You can read more at the Climate.gov blog. This suggests that the pattern of warmer and drier than normal conditions could continue across the Southeast for the next few months, which would not be good for farmers preparing for their spring planting season.