La Niña, the seasonal climate pattern that emerged last fall, will likely fade out soon.

There is a 60% chance that the current La Niña conditions, which bring a cascade of global weather impacts, will end between February and April, the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center reported on Thursday.

This waning La Niña may not have major impacts on California’s weather during the rest of the winter.

“Because this is a very weak event at this point, it’s certainly possible that other factors could overwhelm the influence of La Niña in California,” Nathaniel Johnson, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, told SFGATE.

La Niña is the cool phase of a pattern that brews across the tropical Pacific Ocean, called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. During La Niña events, strong trade winds result in below-average surface temperatures in those waters, while the other phase – El Niño – brings weaker winds that lead to warmer ocean conditions. The pattern alternates irregularly every two to seven years.

Typically, La Niña signals a drier-than-average winter in Southern California – but gives equal chances of a rainy, normal or parched season for much of the northern part of the state, including the Bay Area. Although the early winter’s heavy rainfall throughout California came as somewhat of a surprise, it’s not yet clear if it’s truly been an abnormal season.

“It’s still [too] soon to tell,” Michelle L’Heureux, a climate scientist at the Climate Prediction Center, wrote to SFGATE. “This is because the main influence of El Nino/La Nina tends to be on the January-March and February-April seasons.”

Looking ahead, the latest data shows most of California, especially the southern part, trending toward drier and warmer weather than normal through April. After a very dry January, this week did welcome some rain, however.

“There is some precipitation ahead in the near-term forecast … but it’s too soon to know how much that will change the 3-month average that we evaluate ENSO impacts on,” L’Heureux added.

Once La Niña fades out, it’s probably only a matter of time before the opposite weather phenomenon of El Niño develops. Already, there’s an up to 60% chance that El Niño will form later this summer, according to the Climate Prediction Center’s latest forecast. Although this general guideline may be outdated, El Niño tends to bring wetter winter conditions to California.

The method for classifying El Niño and La Niña is also changing. As of Feb. 1, NOAA adopted a new index that accounts for climate change.

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This article originally published at As La Niña is ending, signs of El Niño emerge for California.