Matt Makens

The big topic is obviously La Niña's departure and warming conditions that will
take us into El Niño rather shortly in the ocean conditions.

The latest projection for El Niño in the ocean conditions is shown with rather
high probabilities.

 The atmosphere lags behind the ocean's change - so keep that in mind. An El
Niño state in the ocean's (as that probability chart depicts) does not mean the
weather pattern across the U.S. will be in one for some time. 

Yet, even with a slow transition, we have seen some drought improvement for the
West and parts of the Northern Plains, meanwhile, the Central to Southern Plains
will continue to struggle with this slow transitional period.

The latest drought monitor issued today is next, followed by an image which
shows drought changes in the past four and twelve weeks respectively.

The drought monitor weighs heavily on soil moisture conditions, in addition to
added inputs from surface water, temperatures, vegetation health, etc.

Soil moisture remains historically driest on record (since 1895 for the dataset
used for this image) for much of the Central to Southern Plains. Yet,
historically wet soils near the Great Lakes and parts of the West and Southwest.

If you are curious about dryness to the north where there was historic snowpack
duration, soil moisture data will increase its reliability for the Northern
Plains now that the snow has melted and soils are thawing there. I'd anticipate
seeing associated changes in this region on the drought monitor going forward
toward improvement. 

I just mentioned historic snowpack, let me address that quickly with a couple of
stats. 

I analyzed data across the country. For mountain locations, some stations there
hit the highest water content on their respective records. Out of curiosity of
just “how long was your winter?”, I filtered data to show me the sites that
recorded their longest streaks of having at least one inch on the ground. This
map displays the results of both those things: 133 of 1144 mountain snow
stations reported their top-three water content snow seasons on record, and 49
of those had their top year on record. Out of thousands of stations reporting
daily snow depth, 85 recorded their longest consecutive streak of days with at
least an inch of snow on the ground. These stretched from the West Coast to the
Great Lakes.

It seems fitting that these snowy areas were also colder than average. For
perspective, let’s see how the cold season played out in a general sense for the
country. 

For the Central and Southern Plains, temperatures were somewhat neutral this
cold season, but precipitation was hard to come by for many. With
warmer-than-average temperatures for the East, including the eastern Corn Belt,
at least there was moisture.

The season eradicated the drought from the eastern Corn Belt and made progress
in the central Corn Belt. In short, yes, it was a historic cold season in many
respects, but my biggest takeaway is the transition away from the La Niña
induced drought of the past several years, now to work on getting the Plains
some moisture.

Despite the winter precipitation, I'm a bit concerned about the Northern Plains,
even into Nebraska; if that region doesn't get a decent rain in mid-May to early
June, we may see the region dry out and hurt the remainder of the growing season
despite what has recently occurred. For Nebraska, I can imagine some drought
continuing through summer due to less than timely moisture for the later Spring
and Summer. Drought will continue to grow in parts of the Pacific Northwest east
of the Cascades. The latest soil moisture image (one such product) is attached.

For the problematically dry, I fear the drought will not make a notable change
here for months and months. Considering that these areas are one to three feet
of precipitation drier than normal during the past few years, even a normal
amount of precipitation (say 12" now through late summer) is not going to help
the rangeland. It'll take more than 18" and more to make a notable improvement
in soils here, and I just don't see that as likely right now.

I'll conclude with the drought outlook for the next three months, which is shown
here.

Tremendous drought conditions plague Plains, others recover