NOAA's fall map has no cold spots left — not one state in the Lower 48: check what El Niño has planned for yours
Every year I open NOAA's seasonal outlook the way other people open their horoscope, and every year it tells me roughly the same fortune: warm, with a chance of chaos.
This fall's edition, though, achieves something special. I scanned the temperature map for a single blue patch — one modest, hopeful splotch of "below normal" — and found nothing. Not one state in the Lower 48 gets favored odds of a cool fall. Zero. The map is wall-to-wall warm colors, like someone knocked over a jar of marmalade on the continental United States.
Who gets cooked, who gets soaked
The September-through-November outlook from the Climate Prediction Center tilts most of the country toward above-normal temperatures, with the strongest warm signal parked over the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies. The West, the Plains, the Gulf Coast, the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic — all leaning warm. Even Alaska. A strip from the central Mississippi Valley into the Ohio Valley and mid-South gets "equal chances," which is forecaster-speak for a shrug.
Rain is where it gets regional:
- Wetter than normal: parts of the Southwest — Arizona, New Mexico, the Four Corners — plus chunks of the Southeast, including Georgia and the Carolinas
- Drier than normal: the Pacific Northwest and areas around the Great Lakes
- Total coin flip: most of the middle of the country
The little boy behind all this
The culprit has a name, and it's Spanish for "the little boy," which is fitting because it's about to rearrange the furniture in every room of the house. NOAA's ENSO advisory puts the odds of a "very strong" El Niño this fall and winter above 90%, with a 69% chance it becomes the strongest event in records going back to 1950. That is not a typo. Strongest. Since 1950.
"El Niño winters are typically warmer across the continental United States," NOAA lead seasonal forecaster Matthew Rosencrans told USA TODAY, noting the warmth is most pronounced from the Pacific Northwest to the Great Lakes.
One caveat before you sell your winter coat on Poshmark: these maps show probabilities, not promises. "Warm lean" does not mean no cold snaps, and a historic El Niño doesn't guarantee historic impacts in your specific zip code. But if you were waiting for a sign to procrastinate on winterizing anything — the entire map just winked at you.
