This is what Boone County could expect for weather this winter, despite the hot summer
Boone County should expect a drier winter this year and into 2024 thanks to a climate pattern known as El Nino, said Patrick Walsh, meteorologist with the St. Louis National Weather Service Office.
A drier winter does not mean no precipitation. Based on outlooks from the NWS' Climate Prediction Center for Boone County — and Missouri as a whole — there are equal chances of either below- or above-average precipitation, and there is that same chance for temperatures. This outlook already takes into account El Nino data, Walsh said.
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"El Nino does not as drastically affect us as it does with the south and southwest," Walsh said, adding the hot, record-breaking summer, does not necessarily correlate with a warmer winter. "The way the pattern has set up this year is what led us to the warmth and dryness we have had. Within a season from summer to fall to winter, those patterns could change and a set-up could come around that would make us colder or wetter."
El Nino is what happens when trade winds — prevailing easterly winds that circle the Earth near the equator — are weaker allowing warmer Pacific Ocean water to move further north toward the U.S. west coast and Asia. This climate pattern usually peaks in December, the National Ocean Service notes in an online fact sheet.
"The chance that our young El Niño will continue through the winter is greater than 90%," wrote Emily Becker, from the University of Miami Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center's El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, blog on July 13.
El Nino brings warmer and drier weather to the Pacific Northwest, into the plains states and Midwest and into the northeast U.S. It brings wetter weather in the entire southern half of the U.S.
El Nino's converse is La Nina or a cooling of Pacific waters, often leading to a wetter and cooler winter in Missouri. There were La Nina patterns in winter 2021-22 and in winter 2022-23. Despite the stronger La Nina years, winter weather was vastly different in 2022 compared to 2023.
In February 2022, NWS recorded 15-inches of snow for Boone County/Columbia. A year later it was just a trace. Total snowfall in the 2021-22 season was slightly more than two feet. In 2022-23 it was 7.4 inches.
Pacific Ocean temperatures are 0.8 degrees Celsius, (1.4 F) higher than the long-term average of temperatures from 1991 to 2020, Becker wrote. Temperatures at 0.5 degrees C or above the long-term average indicates El Nino conditions.
The El Nino/La Nina weather patterns oscillate, hence people studying ENSO. Pacific temperatures have been cooler since 2020, so they're oscillating back up again.
Charles Dunlap covers local government, community stories and other general subjects for the Tribune. You can reach him at cdunlap@columbiatribune.com or @CD_CDT on Twitter. Subscribe to support vital local journalism.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Boone County's winter weather outlook
