Texas Long Range Forecast Update, April, 2018

Truly one of the more polarizing state maps you will see. East Texas is wet and West/Northwest Texas is VERY dry. The map below shows precipitation percentage of average for the past 60 days.

That's right, some areas are at 0-10% of average! What does that mean in terms of drought? It means severe to extreme drought is a growing problem...

Most of Texas is seeing moderate to extreme drought, with the worst of it across the Panhandle. In fact, the far northeast part of the Panhandle is technically in exceptional drought!

La Niña Update

As you can see above, the sea surface temperatures off the west coast of South Amercia are still below average, but a "warmer than average pocket" has been forming just west of South America. We continue to believe that this La Niña episode is going to come to an end pretty soon. Water temperatures below the surface are also continuing to warm. The animation below shows that trend pretty clearly, with the coolest water being confined to the top 50 meters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

All of that orange and red that is migrating from left to right, is warmer than average water that has been pooled up in the Western Pacific Ocean. Its movement eastward continues to erode La Niña, and will return the ENSO region of the Pacific to "neutral" conditions. What happens after that? Well, a warm pool of subsurface water like that can portend a future El Niño. The model image below shows a gradual trend in that direction...

As you can see from the "spaghetti lines", quite a few of the models take us toward weak El Niño territory by the Fall. Right now, models can struggle with predicting what ENSO will do. Predictability should become more clear in the next couple of months, after the seasonal change takes place.

NMME Model

Precipitation Forecast

Temperature Forecast

NMME is showing drier than average and warmer than average for April, May, and June. I think this will be especially true for the western half of the state.

JAMSTEC Model

Precipitation Forecast

Temperature Forecast

JAMSTEC continues to show drier than average and warmer than average conditions through May. Again, no surprises here... However, areas of East Texas are showing up "white" meaning average precipitation is expected. The dry stay dry and the wet stay wet...

CFS Model

Precipitation Forecast

Temperature Forecast

The CFS Model is pretty non-commital when it comes to the precipitation forecast. Not sure it knows what is happening, but as I've stated above...the dry likely will stay dry and the wet will likely stay wet. Warmer than average temperatures are forecast, and that seems appropriate...especially, for the the western 2/3 of the state.

West half of Texas will be drier than average and warmer than average. East half of Texas will be average to wetter than average with near average temperatures.

Forecast:

Temperatures

Precipitation