La Nina is Back!

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center has just confirmed that La Nina appears to be strengthening and is forecast to continue into the winter of 2012.

Their official winter outlook comes out mid-October, but it appears that we will be seeing a 'back-to-back" La Nina event. Typically, La Nina occurs every three-to-five years, but back-to-back episodes occur about 50 percent of the time.

In the short term, the return of La Nina should mean a continued active hurricane season through November.

This forecast is certainly not good news for Texas. La Nina winters tend to bring warmer than normal temperatures and drier than normal conditions . This means drought conditions are likely to continue in drought-ridden states like Texas.

Before La Nina becomes much stronger, let's hope we get some much-needed rainfall!