NOAA’s Center for Climate Change (CPC) released its 2025-2026 winter Outlook on Thursday, and it looks like many countries can expect milder conditions this season.
The outlook, which predicts a seasonal change across the country for the months of December, January and February, shows the possibility of high temperatures above and dry conditions in many parts of the United States. Northern nations, except the Northeast, can expect moderate temperatures and wet conditions.
Understanding Outlook maps
It is important to note that this 90-day forecast does not predict actual temperature or future climate values. Instead, it predicts the likelihood of average seasonal and global temperatures being above normal, near normal, or below normal, based on historical climate data from 1991 to 2020.
The darker the color on the map, the higher the chances of this place falling into that category. Dark colors do not indicate a large departure from the average temperature. The white areas on the map have equal chances of finding above-, near-, and below average or average temperatures.
La Niña in full depth
On October 9, the CPC confirmed that La Niña conditions emerged in September, as indicated by the expansion of average ocean temperatures across the central and eastern Pacific.
Under normal conditions in the Pacific, trade winds blow west of the equator, moving warm water from South America to Asia. Cold water then rises from the depths to replace the warm water in a process called Up.
El Niño and La Niña are opposing weather patterns that disrupt these normal conditions, according to Noaa. Together, they are known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (Enso) Cycle. During La Niña, the trade winds are stronger than usual, pushing warm water towards Asia. This increased upwelling on the west coast of the Americas, bringing colder, richer water.
The high temperatures of the Pacific Ocean push the jet stream – the fast, current, thin air from west to east that circles the globe – to the north. This often causes drought in the southern US and heavy rain in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Under LA NI 17A conditions, winter temperatures also tend to be above average in the south and below average in the north. Both methods are shown by CPC maps for Outlook.
El Niño and La Niña periods usually last 9 to 12 months, but can last for years. The CPC expects LA NIñA’s weak conditions to persist through the winter, then transition to neutral conditions sometime between January and March 2026.
As the season unfolds, short-term forecasts will provide more information about the weather in your neck of the woods. For now though, the big picture shows a winter shaped by the influence of La Niña, with very different conditions north and south of us
