Outlook Brighter for 2023 Growing Season
With Eric Snodgrass, Nutrien Ag Solutions
Things are looking up for growers, according to Eric Snodgrass, Principal Atmospheric Scientist with Nutrien Ag Solutions. “The most important factor going forward is that we have lost La Niña. The last three years La Niña drove very dry conditions throughout the Plains and parts of the western corn belt and quite bad conditions out west to California,” says Snodgrass.
After an extremely dry fall and early winter, which saw very low levels in the Mississippi River, late December and most of January rebounded with huge amounts of rain and snow, including at the headwaters in Minnesota and Wisconsin. This has led to a swing from record lows in the fall to very high levels this spring, and some flooding already.
“As of December 1st, 86 percent of the lower 48 was in some form of drought; between abnormal to exceptional drought conditions. Now we are at about 50 percent. Usually, we don’t think about drought breaking in winter but this was one of those times because the weather was so mild,” says Snodgrass.
The long range forecasts have much of the Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley seeing wetter than average conditions this spring. However, there is still quite a bit of the Central and Southern Plains, from West Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and parts of eastern Colorado as well as Mexico, where the air is incredibly dry and a major concern going forward. That region will really need spring rain to undo that drought.
But Snodgrass isn’t keen to see that. “Funny to say, but I don’t want that drought completely undone. The reason is because the precipitation needed to wipe out the drought in the Western Plains would cause historic flooding.” California is a prime example of this with record droughts only undone by severe flooding.
What is needed is a balance; enough moisture to get a new crop established and ease into normal summer precipitation and thunderstorm activity.
The spring into summer forecast
With the return of El Niño the forecast is for more routine weather systems in the 2023 growing season. “With the La Niña factor gone we will tend to have what we call zonal flow. The jet stream does a better job of moving west and east, rather than building up in big ridges that get stuck in all sorts of places,” says Snodgrass.
While March was quite cold everywhere, things should begin opening up in April, especially in the Western Corn Belt. “I don’t see the drought fully cured in the Plains and Eastern Corn Belt and there will be relatively tight planting windows due to wetter conditions,” says Snodgrass.
Snodgrass also predicts a pretty active severe weather season for the Southern Plains to the Mid-South and Southeast, which has already kicked-off in some areas. There is a lot of warm water in the Gulf of Mexico which means there is more energy and heat moving. Combine this with an active jet stream and it tends to lead to more storms. This will have an impact through the months of April, May and early June.
But there is good news. “I don’t think we are going to see a whole lot of widespread drought development again this summer,” says Snodgrass. However, to completely cure the drought in the Plains there would need to be steady rainfall and that is challenging for that area as it is in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains.
With quite a bit of warm water in the North Pacific and the El Niño effect this summer, Snodgrass predicts heat in the Northwestern States such as Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. While the long range summer forecast still holds some questions Snodgrass is optimistic. “I’ll tell you, a year ago nearly every long range forecast model was suggesting hot, dry conditions west of the Mississippi. They’re not doing that this year. So, there’s a good signal in all of this.”
For the complete conversation listen to The Dirt podKast with Mike Howell.
There are many tools for growers on the eKonomics website including our Rainfall Tracker.
