NOAA Forecast Maps Reveal What’s in Store for Your State This Winter

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) released its 2025-2026 winter forecast outlook on Thursday, and it looks like many states can expect relatively mild conditions this season.

The outlook, which predicts seasonal changes across the country for the months of December, January, and February, shows a high likelihood of above-average temperatures and drier conditions for much of the southern United States. Northern states, with the exception of the Northeast, can expect below-average temperatures and wetter conditions.

Understanding the outlook maps

It’s important to note that this 90-day outlook does not predict the actual temperature or precipitation amounts for the upcoming season. Rather, it predicts the likelihood that the season’s average temperature and precipitation will be above normal, near normal, or below normal, based on past weather data from 1991 to 2020.

The darker the color on the map, the higher the chances of that location falling into that category. Darker colors do not indicate a greater departure from the average temperature. White areas on the map have equal chances of experiencing above-, near-, and below-average temperature or precipitation outcomes.

La Niña in full swing

On October 9, the CPC confirmed that La Niña conditions had emerged in September, as indicated by the expansion of below-average sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Under normal conditions in the Pacific, trade winds blow west along the equator, transporting warm water from South America to Asia. Cold water then rises from the depths to replace that warm water in a process called upwelling.

El Niño and La Niña are two opposing climate patterns that disrupt these normal conditions, according to NOAA. Together, they’re known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle. During La Niña, trade winds are stronger than usual, pushing more warm water toward Asia. This increases upwelling off the west coast of the Americas, bringing cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface.

Colder Pacific sea surface temperatures push the jet stream—a fast, narrow current of air flowing from west to east that encircles the globe—northward. This typically causes drought in the southern U.S. and heavy precipitation in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Under La Niña conditions, winter temperatures also tend to be above average in the south and below average in the north. Both these trends are reflected by the CPC’s seasonal outlook maps.

Periods of El Niño and La Niña typically last 9 to 12 months, but they can last years. The CPC expects weak La Niña conditions to persist through the winter, then shift to ENSO-neutral conditions sometime between January and March 2026.

As the season unfolds, short-term forecasts will offer more precise information about the weather in your neck of the woods. For now though, the bigger picture reflects a winter shaped by La Niña’s influence, with starkly different conditions in the northern and southern U.S.