That sound you hear is the death rattle of El Niño, but he’s not going down without a fight.  Welcome rains across the state of Texas – and some rains not so welcome, now that many of the reservoirs are full – suggest that El Niño, the oceanic phenomenon that seems to drive a lot of North America’s weather patterns, is not done with us yet.

Still, the climatologists at NOAA are fairly certain we’ll transition to a full-blown La Niña by fall 2016.

What that portends is just an educated guess, but our wettest years in the southern High Plains tend to be associated with El Niño episodes and the driest with the La Niña episodes.  Pacific oceanic temperature trends, wind anomalies, and outgoing radiation data are all consistent with a developing La Niña.  The summer of 2016 may keep us wetter than average, but summer 2017 may be setting up a new drought cycle for the Texas Panhandle.  We’ll see!