Even without Harvey, 2017 has been a wetter than usual year for Houston, so a warm and dry winter might be just what we need. With a "La Nina" winter in the seasonal forecast, that might be just what we get.
Weather Channel Meteorologist Scott Lawrimore says the Pacific Ocean has more to say about our weather than the Atlantic.
"Well a lot of times we look to the trends, ironically, in the Pacific to determine how the weather is going to play out for the United States for the seasons."
Lawrimore says we're expecting a La Nina.
"That generally brings warm and dry weather for south central parts of the country, so that is the climate outlook, officially, from the Climate Prediction Center for Texas."
Lawrimore says more than half the time La Ninas mean warmer and drier weather for us and colder, snowier weather to our north.
"It's not a sure thing; the correlations of La Nina and warm, dry winters have a pretty good record since we've been looking at this kind of thing -- a better than 60% chance of warm and dry for the winter months ahead for Texas."
It looks like much of the rest of the nation may get a colder than usual winter