NOAA: Spring This Year Is Set to Hit the 'Sweet Spot'

The United States can expect a nice spring break from the too rainy or too dry extremes of the past, federal meteorologists predicted Thursday. After some rough seasons of drought, flooding, and fires, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's spring outlook calls for a less hectic season that should be warmer and wetter, but not prone to major flooding and with drought at low levels, per the AP.

• Flooding and drought: There's zero major or record flooding forecast, with much of the East and Southeast predicted to get more nuisance-type flooding that doesn't cause property damage, said Ed Clark, director of NOAA's National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Meanwhile, less than a quarter of the country is in drought, with just 0.14% of the nation experiencing the highest level of drought, which is unusually low, said Jon Gottschalck of NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. In other words, a sweet spot.

• Transition: Former NOAA chief scientist Ryan Maue, who wasn't involved in the spring forecast, said there's likely to be a bit of "overtime winter" at the end of the month for the Great Lakes and Midwest, but otherwise, spring is looking good. He and others say the world is transitioning from a strong El Niño to a forecast summer La Niña, which is El Niño's cooler cousin. "A mild wet pattern for the next one to two months will probably give way to a hot, dry La Niña summer, but until then we may actually see a bona fide spring transition season rather than flipping the switch directly to summer," Maue said.
• Asterisks: Near the end of spring, flow rates along the lower part of the Mississippi River could be low for barge traffic, Clark said. Meanwhile, wildfire risk is still high in parts of the country, including the southern High Plains region, Gottschalck said. The NOAA forecast also doesn't look precisely at tornadoes or severe storms, which may be a bigger problem than usual this spring. That's mostly because a warm, relatively ice-and-snow-free winter in the Midwest sets up conditions ripe for those more severe weather systems, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University.

(More spring stories.)