Following back-to-back La Niña winters with wet and cool conditions in the Pacific Northwest, forecast models had predicted warming of the Pacific Ocean waters along the equator and a subsequent El Niño.

Nature has slammed on the brakes.

Waters of the Pacific have now cooled in many areas, making the wintertime forecast more muddled with the likely outcome of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (the name for the phenomenon) for the winter now a neutral or "La Nada".

NOAA has just published their updated winter outlook, which mirrors recent thinking in the meteorological community.

We're still looking at overall drier-than-normal conditions in the Pacific Northwest, though instead of an unusually warm winter season on average, we'll likely have more bouts of cold weather.

So what does a neutral pattern bring to the Northwest?

While a strong El Niño would bring warmer weather and dry spells to the Northwest, many of our more potent storms (especially wind storms) have come in neutral years.

However, other neutral years have the Northwest drawing a dry card.

Lowland snow?  Well, that can happen in any sort of ENSO pattern, while it just becomes more likely in a La Niña pattern.  

All we need is a good fetch of Pacific moisture running up and over the top of low-level cold air... and bingo, lowland snow!

Predicting how many snow events might occur and when has been -- and is certain to continue to be -- outside the abilities of long-range winter forecasts.

There are other factors at work right now involving oscillations of air pressure and temperature across both the Atlantic and Pacific.  These mechanisms also play into a winter forecast.

While a very strong El Niño would "weight the dice" toward warm and dry weather, we frankly go forward from here without much ability to say that a particular outcome is likely based on the ENSO pattern.

Thus, we'll need to stay vigilant to weather patterns upstream in the Pacific and how they evolve.