Hi CJ,

You're right that in the average of all La Nina winters since 1950, there is a very slight tendency for below average temperatures in New England. However, one of the figures above shows that the tendency is reversed in the last 10 La Nina winters, indicating that the long-term warming trend is counteracting that slight tendency for cooler temperatures in New England.  The forecast models of the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/NMME/seasanom.shtml) also have been fairly consistent in forecasting a tendency for warmer than average across the entire eastern U.S., so they seem to be honing in on this La Nina + trend signal.  Because no two El Nino or La Nina episodes are the same, it's also possible that there are particular features of this forecast event that may lead to deviations from the classic La Nina signal, but it is difficult to tease out exactly what those features may be without additional study.

The precipitation signal over New England is quite weak, and NOAA's Winter Outlook reflects this.  That doesn't mean New England won't see a wet (or dry) winter - either option certainly is possible!  New England is impacted by other important large-scale climate patterns such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), but those patterns are much more difficult to predict more than a couple weeks in advance.