As El Niño strengthened in the Pacific in late 2023, federal forecasters said the climate pattern was likely to steer the coming winter across much of the United States. NOAA’s winter outlook, released October 19, 2023, pointed to a season divided between wetter conditions in the South and warmer-than-average temperatures across much of the northern tier. The agency said the setup increased the potential for disruptive weather, even though seasonal outlooks do not predict individual storms.
NOAA releases its winter outlook as El Niño strengthens
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service, released its U.S. Winter Outlook on October 19, 2023, saying El Niño was in place heading into winter for the first time in four years. According to NOAA, that pattern favored warmer-than-average temperatures across the northern tier of the continental United States and wetter-than-average conditions from California across the South to the Gulf Coast and parts of the Southeast.
The agency said the outlook covered December 2023 through February 2024 and was based largely on the expected influence of a strengthening El Niño. NOAA Chief Scientist Sarah Kapnick said the seasonal forecast provides guidance used by industries ranging from energy and agriculture to tourism and commodities markets, according to the agency’s release.
NOAA’s forecasters also said the developing pattern could support drought improvement in parts of the South, the lower Mississippi Valley, Texas and sections of the Midwest. At the same time, the agency noted that seasonal outlooks describe probabilities over three months, not the exact timing or path of winter storms.
For the northern United States, NOAA said the highest chances for above-normal temperatures stretched from the Pacific Northwest through the northern Rockies, Great Lakes, Alaska and into parts of New England. That did not mean cold outbreaks would be absent. In NOAA’s media briefing transcript, forecasters said periods of cold could still occur during winter and early spring even in regions where the seasonal average leaned warmer than normal.
Across the South, the agency said wetter-than-average conditions were favored from Southern California through the Southwest, across the Gulf Coast and into parts of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. That pattern is consistent with a more active southern storm track often associated with El Niño, according to NOAA.
What remained unconfirmed at the national scale was how those broad signals would translate into local snowfall totals, ice events or the number of severe winter storms in any given state. NOAA did not release storm-by-storm projections or a comprehensive map of local snow impacts, and the agency has long cautioned that seasonal outlooks are not designed for that level of detail.
NOAA’s climate forecasters had been warning for months that El Niño was likely to persist through the 2023-24 Northern Hemisphere winter. In a July 2023 ENSO Diagnostic Discussion, the Climate Prediction Center said forecasters favored continued growth through the fall, with the event expected to peak in winter at moderate-to-strong intensity.
That forecast context mattered because stronger El Niño events can shift the jet stream and alter where storms track across North America. NOAA said those changes often increase the likelihood of wetter conditions in the southern United States while tilting the odds toward warmer seasonal averages across the North.
For residents and businesses, the practical takeaway was that winter was expected to be uneven rather than uniform. Southern states had higher odds of a wetter season, northern states had higher odds of above-normal temperatures, and drought conditions were expected to improve in some regions, according to NOAA. The agency also said stronger El Niño events raise the likelihood of climate anomalies, but they do not ensure that every community will see the same winter outcome.