December 2nd, 2025 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

The current La Nina continues to TEMPORARILY cool global temperatures with it's cooler, tropical Pacific water temperatures.
The forecast is for this fairly weak La Nina to start warming soon, evolving to neutral conditions by next Spring, continuing towards weak El Nino as the year goes on.
La Nina's usually have an adverse impact on our growing seasons(hot/dry) El Nino's are associated with wetter growing seasons and favorable weather, so this is a positive outlook for the Cornbelt next year. The more El Nino-ish/ less La Nina-ish, the better the analogs are.
ENSO: Recent Evolution,
Current Status and Prediction




Here are the ENSO neutral analogs for next year.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/ENSO/prcp-ta/clickmap.prcp.ta.neutral.html
Indiana: ABOVE average rains with green bars for next Summer.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Illinois: Average rain

Iowa: ABOVE average rain

Ohio: Near equal odds

Here's another site with some analogs for ENSO neutral. You can adjust the settings to whatever ENSO state and month you want to look at. This is June and July below:
https://hprcc.unl.edu/agroclimate/cpv.php
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Long range forecasting skill is not great and even lower for neutral events.