Drought has been on the top of people’s minds in some areas of the country, and officials with the Kansas Water Office offered their predictions for the weather in the upcoming months during a webinar Dec. 7.
Mary Knapp, climatologist at Kansas State University, and Doug Kluck, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Central Regional Climate Services director, shared their thoughts, along with Gary Koons, water resource planner for the Kansas Water Office.
Koons said KWO primarily monitors and coordinates responses throughout the state. They also put together a monthly climate report—showing if drought is effecting the state with the help of Knapp and a number of other sources. In addition they put out social media posts and press releases.
“And a big part of the monitoring it’s really to kind of be the eyes for the governor’s office and we provide updates as needed to them,” Koons said. “We also maintain the governor’s drought response team, which we can have new faces come in to different roles.”
Many state agencies designate a person to be on the drought response team, especially if there are indicators a drought could be on the horizon.
The water office uses a phased drought approach made up of three categories—watch, warning and emergency. Their levels nearly line up with the U.S. Drought Monitor rankings. For example, a watch is moderate level drought on the drought monitor, while a warning is severe drought and an emergency is extreme or exceptional categories.
“We do that by county so in the event when we are in a drought, the director of the water office notifies the governor of the drought conditions and the governor’s office assembles the drought team,” he said.
Climatologist thoughts
Knapp detailed how the state got into its current state of drought and gave insight on what’s to come in future months. Looking back, there were two notable droughts in the state—during the 1930s and the 1950s.
“Our annual rainfall is highly variable,” she said. “But it’s not just the overall annual rainfall that affects how our drought patterns develop, it’s also our annual distribution.”
In the last 20 years Knapp said there has been an increase in late winter, early spring moisture and usually an increase in the fall pattern. But in most recent years, this hasn’t held true. And the average temperature, January through October, nationally was the sixth warmest on record. Kansas was a bit closer to average with 39th warmest.
“That is seven-tenths of a degree departure from the long term trends, so slightly warmer,” she said.
The August to October period overall was still warm for the U.S., but Kansas was actually cooler than normal.
“It ranks as the eighth coldest fall of record,” Knapp said. “That’s just a little bit less than a two and a half degree temperature departure.”
Back in September, there were some of the earliest freeze dates on record, and snow in far western Kansas. In the central part of the country—Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma—along with the cooler temps, precipitation was lacking.
In the Dec. 3 update, there were areas of extreme drought in parts of western Kansas, but also severe drought in north central Kansas. Eastern Kansas wasn’t immune, as it has areas of moderate drought.
“So when we look at the categories and how much of the state falls into each of that we’re less than 15% of the state that is completely drought free,” Knapp said. “And we have just over 10%, that is an extreme drought.”
At the start of 2020 there wasn’t any area of the state with extreme drought and more than 67% was drought free.
With the exception of two areas that had surplus moisture, many counties really had the spigot turned off in August. September was dry again too.
“September is a critical time because that’s when you’re really getting that winter wheat established, and having these deficits, play havoc with getting that crop to germinate and get established,” Knapp said. “It didn’t improve much in October, except along the southern border.”
Rainfall that came during the end of November and early December helped areas of central and northeast Kansas. But in the southwest corner of the state there was further degradation and intensification as rainfall continues to miss that part of the state.
“If we look back to the spring in the calendar year, there was some improvement over areas of southwest and south central Kansas, but a whole lot more of the state had one to as many as four classes of degradation, the intensification was strongest in the northwest corner of the state,” Knapp said.
The deficits going into November didn’t clear up moving into December either.
“Winter precipitation doesn’t tend to be a big part of our annual total,” she said.
Generally the western border counties expect to receive less than half an inch of precipitation during December through February. A little more going into the center part of the state, just under two inches. Knapp doesn’t expect the drought situation to improve very much.
“The current seasonal drought outlook is more the drought to remain in place,” she said. “I expect also to have drought develop in the coming months and that south central and southeast, that are currently drought free.”
Knapp thinks the drought will intensify, with increased wind erosion and with that brings dust storms. There’s going to be increased stress on winter wheat, not only in the establishment of it, but tillering and root development and its ability to tolerate normal winter conditions.
“We will likely see falling surface water supplies given the evaporative demand that we’ve been seeing,” Knapp said. “Particularly of concern will be the stock ponds in the eastern part of the state, and we’re also likely to see increased fire danger, as we get these fronts coming through with very strong temperature gradients, very dry air, and some pretty strong winds, that means any fire that gets started can have very active behavior.”
La Niña at the national level
Kluck thinks La Niña will be a big issue this fall and winter, or has already been and it’ll probably continue into the spring. La Niña basically means cooler than average water temperatures in the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean. Temperatures tend to be below normal during these periods.
“This particular La Niña that we’re experiencing is one of the sort of a moderate to stronger version of that they come in various sizes and shapes,” he said. “No La Niña is like the last one.”
Kluck expects across North America there to be cooler than normal temps across the northern plains—in Montana and maybe some of the northwest part of the U.S., and in general, wetter conditions, usually from the west coast and northern west coast. It might even stretch all the way into Minnesota.
“But there are also some times where La Niñas behaved very warmly, if you will,” Kluck said. “So far this year, it looks like December is going to continue this trend that we’re going to stay above normal across most of the central part of the U.S., and, of course, that includes Kansas.”
La Niña’s fall tends to be dry and relatively warm in general and looking back at the last 3 La Niñas or so, they were warmer, 2011-12 is a good example.
“And you know what happened after that,” Kluck said. “We went into an extreme or exceptional drought in 2012. I’m not predicting that I’m just pointing that out.”
The tendency to be dry gets stronger or more pronounced as we move into spring.
“That’s something to watch. And that’s one of the reasons we’re having this conversation right now is to provide a little bit of early warning to that possibility,” Kluck said. “We’re going to have to watch things almost on a weekly basis, or on a monthly basis in terms of how things turn out. We could flip, could be really wet, but it’s not as likely as it normally would be.”
Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].
