The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its U.S. Winter Outlook for the 2024-2025 season on Thursday.

Federal forecasters are still predicting a highly active Atlantic hurricane season thanks to near-record sea surface temperatures and the possibility of La Nina.

An above average hurricane season is expected

Get ready for what nearly all the experts think will be one of the busiest Atlantic hurricane seasons on record thanks to unprecedented ocean heat and a brewing La Nina.

Forecasters say this year's hurricane season for waters around Hawaii will likely be “below normal” with one to four tropical cyclones across the central Pacific region.

After months of gradually warming sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, NOAA officially issued an El Nino advisory Thursday and stated that this one might be different than the others.

The world's oceans are suddenly considerably hotter than just a month or two ago and well above record levels.

Experts say a natural La Nina weather pattern, unusually warm moist air juiced by climate change, and long-term shift in where tornadoes hit all are factors in Thursday's devastating tornado in Alabama.

Government science teams say that 2022 didn't quite set a record for heat, but it was in the top five or six warmest on record depending on who's doing the measuring.

New Zealand had its hottest year on record in 2022, beating a mark set just a year earlier thanks to a combination of natural weather cycles and manmade global warming, according to the agency that monitors temperatures.

The U.N. weather agency is predicting the phenomenon known as La Nina is poised to last through the end of this year, a mysterious “triple dip” — the first this century — caused by three straight years of its effect on climate patterns like drought and flooding worldwide.

Federal meteorologists say this hurricane season may not be quite as busy as they initially thought, but it should still be more active than normal.

A culmination of unique events led to the recent extensive flooding in the Yellowstone region.

Australia has sweltered through its fourth-hottest year on record despite the usually cooling impact in recent months of the La Nina climate pattern, the nations weather bureau said on Friday, Jan. 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft,File)CANBERRA – Australia sweltered through its fourth-hottest year on record last year despite the recent return of the usually cooling La Nina climate pattern, the nation’s weather bureau said on Friday. La Nina, the cooler flipside of the better known El Nino, was declared in the Pacific Ocean in September. La Nina occurs when equatorial trade winds become stronger, changing ocean surface currents and drawing up cooler deep water. The hottest temperature in Australia for 2020 was 48.9 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) recorded at the height of the wildfire emergency at Penrith in New South Wales state on Jan. 4.

Two-thirds of the United States should get a warmer than normal winter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted. Only Washington, northern Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas and northwestern Minnesota, will get a colder than normal winter, forecasters said. The rest of the nation will likely be closer to normal, NOAA said. Judah Cohen, a winter weather specialist for the private firm Atmospheric Environmental Research, sees a harsher winter for the Northeast than NOAA does. But he said La Nina is the strongest indicator among several for what drives winter weather.