La Nina has apparently arrived in the Northwest, signaling a shift to cooler weather and more promising snowpacks, Washington State Climatologist Nick Bond said Thursday.

November was wet but warm, causing flooding in northwest Washington, but little snow in the Cascade Range. Bond said Thursday he anticipates weather patterns will change, dropping snow in the mountains without raising the risk of floods.

“Things have kind of turned around,” he said. “December looks like a different kind of month than November.

“No guarantee it will stay that way for the entire winter, but at least for the rest of this month, it looks like there will be good mountain snows,” Bond said.

Washington’s statewide snowpack, an average of basins throughout the state, was 53% of normal Friday. The snowpack on the same date in 2014 — the winter of Washington’s “snowpack drought” — was 57%.

“I’m starting to worry, honestly,” said Scott Pattee, water supply specialist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Over the past 30 years, more snow builds up in December than any other month, slightly edging January, according to Washington Department of Ecology calculations.

“If we don’t get good snow in December, we go into the new year in a real deficit,” Pattee said. “We still have a chance to catch up, but we’re falling farther and farther behind everyday.”

In the 2014-15 winter, El Nino conditions prevailed, the opposite of a La Nina. El Nino winters are generally warmer in the northern U.S. As the winter went on that year, Washington’s snowpack fell farther behind normal, leading to a summer shortage for irrigation districts.

“The spigot got turned off at the end of December,” Pattee said.

A La Nina generally leads to cool temperatures in the Northwest. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday there’s a 95% chance that La Nina will prevail until the spring.

A La Nina makes the southern U.S. warmer and drier. The La Nina could relieve drought in some parts of the West, but deepen it in other parts. This will be the second La Nina winter in a row.

Bond said the storms that hammered northwest Washington in late November originated farther south than storms expected to be ushered in by La Nina.

The November storms in northwest Washington were “kind of a fluke” and “not a new normal,” but higher global temperatures may not cause such storms to have more moisture in the future, Bond said.

“That is something that is quite possible,” he said. “But it’s not like every year will have floods like this one.”

The U.S. Drought Monitor reported Thursday that Western Washington and Clatsop and Tillamook counties in northwest Oregon were the only regions in nine western states that aren’t at least abnormally dry.

Some 94% of the West is in some stage of drought, ranging from moderate to exceptional.

In Eastern Washington, conditions are improving. For the first time since mid-July, no part of the state is in “exceptional drought,” the worst of four classifications.

Most of southeast Washington, making up 16% of the state, remains in “extreme drought,” the second-worst category. Bond said the region must make up a rainfall deficit.

“My suspicion is the drought will be ameliorated, but not eliminated,” he said.

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center forecasts cool and wet weather in the Northwest for December, January and February.

A swathe of Central Oregon, making up 21% of the state, remains in exceptional drought.

All of Idaho is in drought, including 25% in extreme drought. California also is entirely in drought, including 28% in exceptional drought.