Last month, I talked about the likelihood that La Niña was going to come back and be a factor in our seasonal forecast. So, let’s see what has happened since we last spoke…

Sea Surface Temperature Anomaly as of August 18th

Sea Surface Temperature Change August 11th – August 18th

You can see cooler than average ocean temperatures are persisting across the central equatorial Pacific Ocean as well as from the Baja to the southwest near Hawaii. This is all happening with warmer than average water in the north Pacific. However, you can see from the second graphic above that the north Pacific has been cooling… During the past month, the metric for measuring whether we are in La Niña, El Niño, or La Nada (neutral) has continued to trend more toward La Niña. In fact, we are in La Niña territory right now…below -0.5. However, in order for it to officially be classified as La Niña, it must persist for three consecutive months. 

ENSO 3.4 Index as of August 18th

As I mentioned at the Texas A&M Beef Cattle Short Course, we will likely continue to be in La Niña territory for a while. The latest La Niña probabilities for the rest of this year into 2026 shows just that…

You can see the “blue bars” reflecting a greater than 50% chance that we will be in La Niña by the September/October/November period. We will likely continue to be in that phase through early 2026. While the strength and duration of this event is in question, the fact that we will likely see a La Niña episode for the 5th out of the past six winters certainly looks like a good bet…

Historically, La Niña events tend to dry out the southern tier of the country with the more active storm track being positioned farther north. The latest seasonal model forecast hints at some of that happening…particularly the NMME model.

EURO Seasonal Model Forecast Precipitation Anomaly September-November

NMME Model Forecast Precipitation Anomaly Forecast September-November

I am anxious to see the updated forecast maps in about three weeks, to see if they latch on to the current trend of this event and bring further dryness. That is something that I’ll be focusing on in next month’s article.