Agricultural News
New Southern Plains Perspective Blog Post Explores This Year's La Niña Winter
Fri, 03 Dec 2021 11:35:09 CST
In this blog post Clay Pope talks about future yield change data from ProPublica. Spoiler alert: It does not look good for the Southern Plains. See this blog on the Southern Plains Perspective website by clicking or tapping here.
Well, I guess the weather predictions were right (at least for now).
If you keep up with the weather news, you know by now that the folks with the crystal ball (meteorologically speaking) have been saying since mid-summer that we were in for a La Nina pattern this winter. I wrote about this in an earlier blog: Here we go again- NOAA sees another La Nina on the horizon. Our good friend Victor Murphy with the National Weather Service has mentioned it several times on our podcast-the conditions have developed in the Eastern Pacific to produce surface water temperatures 3 to 5 degrees lower than normal resulting in a La Nina phenomenon which in turn normally leads to higher-than-normal temperatures and lower than normal rates of precipitation on the Southern Plains of the United States.
If you live in Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas is that what you are currently experiencing?
I know where I live the weather sure has been nice-that is, if you don't like rain. According to the latest Drought Monitor Report we are either "abnormally dry" or in a "moderate drought" in my part of the world. That's not terribly unusual, but we are at a point where our winter wheat crop could sure use a drink and we aren't alone. Consider the conditions in Denver, Colorado-they have yet to have any snow- something that the National Weather Service says hasn't happened since they started keeping records in 1882.
And just to keep things crazy, Hawaii had a blizzard warning this week-.
Now keep in mind, things can change in a hurry. Last year was a La Nina winter and while we did have overall above normal temperatures, we also had an October ice storm, early December snowstorms and the record cold snap in February. The weather has always been crazy on the Southern Plains and with climate change that craziness has been shot full of steroids. We need to a plan for both droughts and blizzards. I know that seems like a wild swing, but that's just the reality in this part of the world (for a little more perspective on this and the extreme cold snap last February, check out this interesting interview with Dr. John Nielson-Gammon, the Texas State Climatologist). Everyone needs to put a little thought into how they would deal with extreme weather from droughts and floods to blizzards and fires and everything in between. Failing to plan (especially around here) really is planning to fail.
In the meantime, however, enjoy the warm weather- but please pray for a little rain-at least for wheat farmers.
Read more from Southern Pains Perspective by clicking or tapping here.
Listen to episodes of the Southern Plains Perspective podcast by clicking or tapping here.
The blog deals with climate change, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that was released recently and the role research, specifically LTAR, can play in helping Agriculture deal with what's heading our way.
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