Webinar discusses drought conditions, outlook for rest of fall and winter
There’s been lots of varying shades of red, orange and yellow on the High Plains version of the drought monitor’s map the last few months.
Oklahoma has seen conditions worsen through the summer and into the fall. Northwest Texas and southern Kansas have had drought conditions expand too. In the recent Southern Plains October Climate and Drought Update webinar state climatologists from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas described just how bad conditions were as of late October.
John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas state climatologist and director of the Southern Regional Climate Center, Gary McManus, Oklahoma state climatologist and Matthew Sittel, Kansas assistant state climatologist, broke down what their states are experiencing, and Adam Hartman, meteorologist in the operational prediction branch of NOAA/National Weather Service/Climate Prediction Center provided a national outlook for temperatures and precipitation.
Texas
Nielsen-Gammon said Texas has had dry conditions for quite a while, and areas by the Red River have been record dry for the past few months. Prior to the webinar, this area had received less than half an inch of precipitation.
“Along with these dry conditions have been unusually warm conditions, especially the second half of September and October so far,” he said.
As of the Oct. 22 webinar, long-term drought was observed in parts of Texas, and Nielsen-Gammon said there’s three hot spots—West Texas, along the Red River near Childress and the southwest corner of Oklahoma, and south-central Texas including cities from Austin to San Antonio. The reservoirs are suffering in some areas as well.
“Choke Canyon reservoir, which is south of the long-term drought area, but it’s watershed covers about half of that long-term drought region, and it too is low,” he said. “But again, we’re getting historical levels of drought for long-term supplies. I’m not sure the area relies upon the Edwards Aquifer for water supplies, which is a limestone aquifer and very closely tied to surface water levels.”
When reservoirs are low, the aquifers are low too.
“Water suppliers are starting to implement the water use restrictions in that area because supplies are so low, and ultimately, the aquifer levels can’t drop too low without threatening endangered species, so it’s a very closely managed system,” Nielsen-Gammon said.
September and October tend to be a wetter period for parts of Texas, but it’s not happening in 2024. The dry conditions are pushing wildfires across Texas, and hit a peak of 16 new fires in one day on Oct. 16, Nielsen-Gammon said.
“It’s been active primarily in the eastern part of the state,” he said. “That’s an area which has widespread pine forests with some oak woodlands as well. Whereas pine trees produce a lot of dried pine needles on the ground and so forth, and that’s all ready to burn on fairly short notice, as long as we have very dry conditions for several weeks to a couple months.”
As far as agricultural implications go, farming and ranching operations are behaving mostly normally. Harvesting of fall crops and planting is progressing. Wheat needs moisture to germinate and get established, and in parts of Texas it’s struggling to do so. Some of the crops being harvested are in poor condition because of the lack of moisture during their growing season.
“In ranching, conditions seem to be a bit worse,” he said. “In general, we have areas that have very poor conditions. As far as rangeland goes, producers are starting to cull herds in some areas, a lot of areas are basically at the alarm stage, because stock tanks, the ponds from which the cattle get their water, are depleting, and they really need some more moisture coming in to make sure cattle can actually survive, and pastures are suffering in many areas as well.”
Water restrictions are impacting ranching activities and with increased fire activity, it makes some situations difficult.
“For most part, the farm to ranch impacts are somewhat reversible if we get rain soon,” he said.
Oklahoma
McManus said Oklahoma’s drought condition is similar to Texas and Kansas.
Oklahoma has been suffering the effects of drought since 2021, he said. Even though the drought did end during the spring with help from El Nino, heat and dry conditions pushed moisture levels backward.
“The winter wheat crop is starting to suffer with not being able to be planted due to the lack of soil moisture, and of course, that was dusted in basically—not enough moisture to get it to germinate and emerge.”
Agriculture isn’t the only area being affected, McManus said, as wildfires are becoming a bigger hazard and reservoir levels reflect a longer term drought. He’s often asked how long the drought will last.
“Some of the anecdotal evidence, maybe that we’re a little bit under the gun,” he said.
At the time of the mid-October webinar, McManus said across Oklahoma, drought conditions were spreading and intensifying. More than 80% of the state was in some type of significant drought ratings.
“Unfortunately, if we don’t get significant rainfall in the next few weeks as we do see mostly severe to extreme drought, no exceptional drought that D4 category, category, but that’s on its way again,” he said. “Deficits have continued to grow over the last 30 to 120 days.”
One surprising thing with the moisture readings is the High Plains and far northwest Oklahoma are still the best areas in the state for rainfall—at least as opposed to normal, according to McManus.
“Those are the areas that have gotten lots of rainfall, sometimes in very short periods of time,” he said. “But at least they’ve gotten some heavier rainfall over that timeframe.”
McManus didn’t see the drought ending any time soon, especially after how easily the drought settled in earlier in the year. At the time of the webinar, some parts of Oklahoma had gone 30 days or more without precipitation. Some have gone close to 70 days.
“So, if this does occur like it has in the past, and when we’ve seen this over the last six, seven years that would not be good to give it this much of a head start for that drought to try to start,” he said.
Kansas
Assistant State Climatologist Sittel said his state during mid-October there was varying degrees of drought throughout the state. Eastern Kansas was not looking good, with severe drought (D2) and extreme drought (D3) ratings.
“Currently, only 3% of Kansas is drought free. Three months ago, we were at 42% of the state being drought free, he said. “So, this is definitely a worsening of conditions.”
The D2 or worse ratings in mid-October are some of the highest ratings have been since late May of 2024. D3 ratings in some areas were added back Oct. 8.
“We had had a nice 17-week run where we had no D3 in the state,” he said. “Unfortunately, given how dry it has been, it was necessary to return southeast Kansas into D3.”
Some areas, like Dodge City, had received ample precipitation in the spring—some areas were even 7 to 8 inches above normal.
“A lot of that surplus that we had initially we have lost given the dryness that we’ve had recently,” he said.
Sittel pointed out the average temperatures, just for the month of October, have been above normal. Goodland, in far northwest Kansas, has been the warmest.
“But more interestingly, if they can stay above 60.5 degrees through the end of the month, this will be the warmest October on record for the city of Goodland,” he said. “And while other parts of the state are not likely to have their warmest October, a top five warmest October is very possible for a number of locations in the western half of Kansas.”
Sittel is going to keep an eye on the records and see if they actually end up being broken this year.
“It’s very unusual that it’s been not only dry, but also much above normal,” he said.
Soil temperatures have been running about 4.6 degrees above normal, and since it’s been so dry the dew points have been lower too.
“We’ve had some reasonably close to normal mornings, at least earlier in the month, and then we warm up quite a bit during the afternoons,” Sittel said. “Also, because of that dry air, our total evapotranspiration for the month of October so far across the state, is a 3.21 so its 75 hundredths of an inch above normal.”
Sittel said he’s seeing a lack of precipitation and above normal temperatures, but he’s also seeing increased evaporation demands because of drier air.
Monthly and seasonal outlook
Hartman gave the forecast for the Climate Prediction Center on the monthly and seasonal outlook for temperature, precipitation and drought. He said the “broad overview” of what goes into these outlooks is important to understand.
“We look at various forecasting tools, such as dynamical and statistical model guidance, constructed analogs, sea surface temperature patterns and things of that nature,” he said. “But some of the major things we look at are modes of varied and climate variability. And one of the most popular and arguably most influential with respect to circulation patterns globally, is the El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.”
The current ENSO neutral conditions are present right now in the Pacific Ocean, and that means sea surface temps are nearly normal in the tropical pacific, within a plus or minus .5 degrees Celsius anomaly range.
“But right now we’re actually on the colder side of that range, so sea surface temperatures presently are actually near and below normal in that region,” he said.
Their diagnostic discussion recently released indicates La Nina or cooler than average temps in the tropical Pacific is favored to emerge by the end of November with at least a 60% chance of happening and those conditions are likely to persist through much of the winter and potentially even into early spring. What does that mean for circulation patterns over North America?
“Typically, La Nina conditions result in a northward shifted, or northward displaced storm track across the North American continent, and that typically leads to colder and wetter conditions here across the northern tier of continental U.S., and warmer, conversely, warmer and drier conditions here along the southern tier of the U.S.,” he said.
However, there are some nuances to this predicted La Nina event.
“One is that it is favored to be weak in a short duration, and typically during weak La Nina’s impacts are less likely—the impacts we typically see from La Nina are less likely to occur, but we still expect to provide a meaningful influence on these outlooks,” he said. “So, with the weak La Nina, this kind of opens the door for other modes of climate variability.”
This means there may be some shorter-term shifts in weather patterns and for example, in the southern tier of the U.S., they may see colder and wetter conditions instead of warmer and drier.
As for November temperatures and precipitation outlook, there’s higher forecast probabilities of above normal temperatures and greater confidence that by the end of the month there could be above normal temps and precipitation in some areas. In the central Plains there’s no real chance for probability to swing one way or another for precipitation, equal chances above or below and near normal for temperatures and precipitation, respectively.
From November to January, Hartman’s not really expecting much to change.
“We’re still expecting increased probabilities of temperatures and below normal precipitation for much of the Southern Plains region,” he said. “Now I did mention La Nina is expected to develop by the end of November, but we don’t expect the kind of that atmospheric response and to see that footprint really take hold until really starting around probably the December to January period.”
In addition to the trends he sees—above normal temperature probabilities and below normal precipitation probabilities, it is trending warmer and drier than average during this time of year as well.
As for the seasonal drought outlook, Hartman saw that antecedent dryness over several months across much of the southern central Plains, that antecedent dryness coupled with these above average temperatures and below normal precipitation that are favored indicate that widespread, persistent drought persistence. Most likely across the central and Southern Plains.
In the central Plains, it gets a little dicier.
“As we head toward especially the end of the season, trends kind of offset La Nina signals a little bit,” he said, which causes uncertainty in predicting temperatures and precipitation.
Take it with a grain of salt though, as he doesn’t expect drought to look exactly what models show.
For the winter outlook, Hartman is not expecting conditions not to change very much particularly in the Southern Plains, south of the Red River, predominately. There are equal chances, however, in the central Plains, and middle Mississippi Valley. That’s due to some offsetting signals related to the trends the deeper we go into winter months.
Hartman expects much of the Southern Plains to be warmer and drier than normal through the end of January, with the potential for these conditions to also last for February given the weak La Nina. Other modes of climate variability may bring brief periods of cooler and wetter conditions, maybe some reprieve, but overall, seasonal conditions are able to resemble that La Nina footprint with those warmer and drier conditions as a whole, for the season.
“The biggest takeaway of all the antecedent dryness, warmer dry temperature, precipitation outlooks respectively—favor widespread drought persistence and development processes,” he said.
Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].
