The girl, who makes droughts and hurricanes worse, is finished

WASHINGTON (AP) — After three cruel years, the La Niña weather phenomenon, which lengthens the Atlantic hurricane season and exacerbates droughts in the western United States, has come to an end, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric said. Administration (NOAA) for its acronym in English. ) THURSDAY.

Overall, this is good news for the United States and other parts of the world, including drought-stricken northeast Africa, scientists say.

The balloon is in what’s called a “neutral” state and will likely head for an El Niño by August or September, said climatologist Michelle L’Heureux, head of the El Niño/La Niña forecast office at the NOAA.

“It’s over,” said researcher Azhar Ehsan, head of the El Niño/La Niña bureau at Columbia University. “Mother Nature decided to kill this one because enough is enough.”

La Niña is a natural, temporary cooling of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather patterns around the world. In the United States, due to its association with storms in the Atlantic and droughts and wildfires in the West, Las Niñas is often more damaging than its famous counterpart El Niño, according to experts and various studies.

In general, La Niña is more damaging to US agriculture than El Niño. The latter means more rain for the grain-growing region of the north-central United States, which can prove beneficial, said Michael Ferrari, chief scientist at Climate Alpha, which advises investors on financial decisions based on the weather report.

With La Niña, there are more storms during Atlantic hurricane season because it removes conditions that suppress storm formation. In neutral or El Niño conditions, storm generation is more difficult but not impossible.

In the past three years, the United States has experienced 14 hurricanes and tropical storms that caused more than $1 billion in damage and cost $252 billion, according to NOAA economist and meteorologist Adam Smith. .