UNITED STATES - It’s currently looking like a La Niña winter as Mother Nature gears up to send us what could be a very different season from what we experienced last year.

The flip side to the El Niño warming pattern that affects the ocean temperatures and has been associated with a wetter winter for the western states, La Niña is expected to bring dryer conditions to the Arizona/California regions.

La Nina weather patterns, Business Insider detailed in a recent report, tend to block the west-to-east flow of the jet stream, trapping more storms over the Pacific Ocean.

Contrarily, you might recall the Texas snow anomaly we reported previously that hadn’t occurred in over a decade. This, too, is a La Niña marker, according to Business Insider, which reports the system would mean heavy snow and high winds to the Great Lakes, through Texas, even Florida.

“Those are areas where we wouldn't even talk about a snowfall forecast in general, because it's such a rare event there,” Meteorologist Stephen Baxter of the National Weather Service told the news source.

Baxter also said that this means experts are expecting fairly healthy snow pack to develop in the Rockies, but cautions the California region.

For parts of Southern California, Baxter said drought “could be exacerbated by dry weather,” but that it’s still too soon to make any far off predictions. As always, weather is a difficult factor to bet on.

“There's probably still about a 25% chance that the winter ends up colder than normal, temperature-wise,” Baxter said. “And if that happens it would certainly favor more snow.”

As Southern California continues to combat the Thomas Fire, and other key regions like Texas and Florida work their way back from a devastating hurricane season, we hope for a helping hand from Mother Nature as we continue to report on all the latest from AndNowUKnow.