The latest ENSO outlook was released today and shows that the current weak La Nina is expected to end soon. Conditions in the Eastern Pacific Ocean will swing back to neutral conditions and are expected to stay there through the end of 2025. This La Nina was late in coming and never got very strong, although we did see some typical dry weather across parts of the Southeast as expected with a La Nina event. That dryness is contributing to the drought that is present in parts of the region now (see separate story today). Neutral conditions during the summer does not help us much for predicting summer weather since the correlations between ENSO phase and climate patterns in summer are weak. But because it is already dry and plants are out of dormancy, water usage is up already and could lead to continuing dry conditions this spring and early summer. We also know that in neutral years, the Atlantic tropical season is more active, and so we can expect a higher number of named storms than average, although we don’t know where they will go. The models predict that we will likely return to another La Nina next winter, although there is a chance of neutral or even El Nino conditions by the end of 2025 as well. Here is an expanded discussion from the NOAA Climate blog at March 2025 ENSO update: neutral conditions expected soon | NOAA Climate.gov.
