Your winter—cold, warm, wet or dry—has a great impact on the success of next season’s crop. However, meteorologists have differing views on what to expect across much of the Midwest. Their only agreement? It’ll be an El Niño winter. “We expect El Niño to be in place in the late fall to early winter,” says Mike Halpert, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center. “Although a weak El Niño is expected, it may still influence the winter season by bringing wetter conditions across the southern United States, and warmer, drier conditions to parts of the North.” However, Mike Hoffman, AgDay and U.S. Farm Report meteorologist, says El Niño will be centered more of the central Pacific than the eastern Pacific, which brings slightly different weather patterns. In addition, he doesn’t predict El Niño will last long. “Overall, this is part of the reason for my colder than normal forecast for the eastern two-thirds of the U.S.,” Hoffman says. “And my drier than normal forecast for the Northern Plains and wetter weather in the Southeast.”