Winter 2010-2011 Outlook

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center has put out their winter outlook for December to February 2010 to 2011. With an ever growing stronger La Niña, we may be dealing with a warmer and drier than normal winter for West Texas and Southern New Mexico. With us already running below normal in precip for the year, this won't bode well for the Spring season...where we see the majority of our dust storms and dangerous fire weather days. This is also in contrast the chilly and somewhat wet winter we saw last year. While this doesn't rule out the chances of seeing (significant) snows in El Paso & Las Cruces, it does appear that it will be less than likely with the prevailing weather pattern ahead.

Much of the Texas and the South Central U.S. will see those warmer temps, with cooler weather likely for the west coast and the northern tier of the nation. As far as precip for country, weather will likely be wetter than normal for the Pacific Northwest, parts of the Ohio River valley, and parts of the upper Rockies. Weather looks dry from here in the Borderlands through Texas, along with good chunks of the Southeast, including Florida. All images below are courtesy of NOAA.

U.S. Winter Temperature Outlook

U.S. Winter Precipitation Outlook