The weather experts who look at the big picture say we’re facing a “La Niña winter” this time around. For the West, this means it will be wet in the north and dry in the south.
But the moisture won’t arrive for a while. The La Niña pattern includes relatively warm, dry days well into November, with snow and cold coming hard in December and January.
The last La Niña was in 2007-08, and it certainly followed that pattern. That November, local merchants were wondering if anyone would get into the “holiday spirit,” given that we had a long string of T-shirt days and the local ski area — which has no snow-making machinery — had postponed its opening.
Then December arrived, and there was more winter than anybody, except perhaps the ski area, really wanted to see.
Colorado is in the middle between north and south in the West, so fluctuations on the jet stream will determine how much of the state gets buried in December and January.
La Niña means “the girl” in Spanish, and it’s a cognate of “El Niño,” which means “the boy,” and in this context, the baby Jesus. Fishermen off the west coast of South America noticed that in some years around Christmas (El Niño season), their catch suffered on account of warmer water flowing in from the equatorial zone of the Pacific Ocean.
If cold water flows because the zone is cooler than usual, then it’s a La Niña, the opposite of El Niño. It’s also called the anti-El Niño, and another opposite — El Viejo, the Old Man.
In some years, there’s talk of “La Nada” — the nothing, or at least nothing out of the ordinary. El Niños and La Niñas tend to run in three- to seven-year cycles, and if you want to sound technical, you can call it ENSO for “El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation.”
Ed Quillen is a freelance writer in Salida, Colorado.
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