Drought
The forecasts through the rest of the month hold little promise of any relief for anything beneficial. I have never seen crops being harvested so early. Most of the corn and soybeans in the fields near me have already been harvested.
Do any of you long range forecasters see this pattern breaking down, and allowing for some relief for the midwest anytime soon? This is starting to get ridiculous... :(
The long term forecast doesnt look great, maybe a few chances here and there, but nothing major as of right now.
I am REALLY hoping to see another January 2, 1999 event OR better yet; a December 23, 2004 event (except over my area). I would rather have a single 36 inch snowstorm and be done with the season than have a 2 incher every other day :x
I am sitting dead center in the lowest soil moisture in the midwest. Now over 20" short of precip for 2005. And to top it off, today, a huge shield of rain forms literally 15 miles to the east of us and explodes in coverage and intensity.
The only thing that's saving us from fires in this area is the higher humidity and residual top moisture from the snow.... :cry:
I wouldn't get too down about prospects for the storm season as a result, though. In fact I think all things equal more surface heating is a good thing for storms. The problems are much more subtle and large scale.
I'm a big fan of ocean temperature anomalies to provide some slight indication of what's in store. I think there's some slight correlation between higher than normal Gulf of Alaska and eastern Pacific temperatures and a sub-par early Plains storm season. The reason might be that the warmer ocean encourages ridging with corresponding troughing over the northern Plains and Midwest.
Right now ocean temperatures look a lot like last year at this time, which isn't to say that they will in a few months, but it wouldn't surprise me. FWIW.
From the word go this year, we've been below normal, and are currently running about 8-10 inches below our normals of over 30" for this time of year.
We had some long stretches of rainfall deficits in the late spring months, and it looked like we were going to have a terrible fire season (like 99 and 2000 which were terrible). While the farmers need more rain, we've managed to get a few showers here and there and were able to avert a disastrous season. Also, a saving grace wasn't going through nature's gotcha of tons of late spring rain, then no rain for months. Fuels grow like weeds here, even when they're not. They dry out and "poof."
Lake levels are very low on some reservoirs that aren't fed by rivers.
The midwest is usually a pretty active part of the country year round. But for some reason this season it's like we're a rock in a stream, everything flows around us. I was hoping with the changing seasons something would break it down, but the drought continues on, getting worse by the day.....
Seriously though, I have much sympathy for all of you in the extreme drought regions; now you know what Colorado and the West went through in 2002! That year was hell, and we had many, many grassfires that summer, some that burned in excess of 10,000 acres within ten miles of our farm. That was a little scary. :shock: Not to mention the forest fires in the mountains which claimed hundreds of thousands of acres. Also 90% of the crops statewide were wrecked, and dryland and irrigated farmers were in the same boat because what little of the irrigation water was there was diverted to keep the city water supplies from drying up. That year caused the near extinction of the small acreage dryland farmer, and my dad will probably never fully recover financially from that hellacious year. Here is to record breaking early spring snowstorms and rainfall in the Central and Southern Plains, followed by wickedly insane tornado outbreaks to make up for last year's mostly pathetic chase season (yes, I acknowledge there were some great chase days, but for the most part tornadoes were few and far between until about November, when they occured in largely unchaseable terrain and when most everyone had no time to chase them.)Anyway, here's to 2006, and may the chase season keep us on our toes from April to July! :twisted:
Sorry for getting off topic. :)
The results show that my area is 15.73 inches behind the 7 year norm. 2005 is also the first year in which less than 40 inches of annual rain has occurred at my location.
Excel spreadsheet showing the monthly break down of rainfall at my location:
http://weather.xonelabs.com/Home%20Station...%20Rainfall.xls (http://weather.xonelabs.com/Home%20Station%20Rainfall.xls)
Another ominious statistic is that since September of 2005, the DFW area has only received 2.60 inches of rainfall, or just 22.30 percent of our average for that time period. Worse yet, looks like the first quarter of 2006 will bring more of the same weather for our area---very little precipitation, above average temperatures, and lots of wind. I most definitely hope that this pattern changes by March or the Southern Plains states could be in for a supercell drought also. 2005 was very, very "inactive" for North Texas with regards to severe thunderstorms and supercells---one of the slowest seasons in the past several years.
Happy New Year everyone. Time to start PRAYING for rain for the Southern Plains!!!
Where is Geukes at? We need some drought/ following season statistics pronto! :D
Aaron
If I recall correctly, the drought out west was pretty bad over the winter and into the spring of 2003. Interestingly enough, west Texas had an almost non-existant tornado season that year, with much of the action along and east of I35. It does make a bit of sense that if the soil is VERY dry to the west, the dryline would likely mix eastward a bit easier/faster. That said, I didn't think soil moisture really affect much beyond the very near-surface layer, which I doubt would affect dryline propagation too much. Not sure though...
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