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La Niņa
El Niņo's angry little sister
La Niņa is charaterized by usually cold water in the Pacific Ocean. This is the opposite
of what an El Niņo produces since an El Niņo usually results from usually warm water in
the Pacific Ocean. [If you do not fully understand an El Niņo, please go back and read
those sections.]
La Niņa means "the little girl" and is sometimes called El Viejo (old man). It
used to be called anti-El Niņo by the scientific community, but once realized that this
translates to "anti-Christ", this name was quickly changed.
La Niņa features cold waters in the Pacific Ocean. If we look at this graph, we can see
that during an El Niņo, there is a lot of warm water, represented by shades of red. But,
during a La Niņa, these red-shaded areas become very rare and more blue starts to move
in.
El Niņo and La Niņa are opposite phases of the El Niņo-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)
cycle, with La Niņa sometimes referred to as the cold phase of ENSO and El Niiņo as the
warm phase of ENSO.
El Niņo and La Niņa events vary in strength. For example, the La Niņa in 1987 was a
stronger than the La Niņa in 1995.
La Niņa will certainly bring us a different winter next year than we observed in 1998.
There will be a tendency for more variability in our daily and monthly weather patterns
because the jet stream is expected to be situated over the central United Sates rather
than over northern Mexico and the northern Gulf of Mexico as observed during last winter.
Nationally, the spring of 1998 (March - May) was the 47th wettest and the 24th warmest
spring on record since detailed records began in 1895, according to the preliminary data
from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
The wettest spring on record, according to NOAA, occurred in 1973 with a national average
precipitation of 10.14 inches. The driest spring on record, with a national average
precipitation of 5.32 inches, occurred in 1925.
Sign up for the El Niņo Newsletter
Sign up for our El Niņo newsletter which will contain the
most updated information about La Niņa. The 1998-99 La Niņa is predicted to be quite
strong. Thus, if you live in any of the areas that have been affected by El Niņo or will
be affected by La Niņa, sign up for our newsletter to receive the most updated
information including links to where you can find more information. If you wish, let us
know at 20901@advanced.org , and we will mail a different language version of our
newsletter just for you. (The default version is English.)
This newsletter will also contain other information such as new posts to our message
forums and upcoming Chat Events. So...what are you waiting for...sign
up.
Next Section: The Effects of La Niņa