OK, sports fans, La Niña is back. This is good news for some mountains and bad news for others. And it’s actually really bad news for meteorologists, who now must answer the barrage of requests for a six-month snow forecast. Just remember that a seasonal forecast is less important than following each individual storm during the winter. That said, here’s the scoop on La Niña.

Water temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean are much colder than average, which is the definition of La Niña. Those temperatures can affect weather patterns across the globe, and that’s why La Niña is important. For North America, La Niña has some predictable consequences for snow during the winter: it snows a lot.