Severe weather is a concern for the Midwest this year, as it always is. Eric Snodgrass of Nutrien Ag Solutions cited the December 15th outbreak as a sign of more severe outbreaks to come.
?That December 15th event, it went from Colorado to Wisconsin and nine hours, that’s how fast it was moving, almost 700 reports of severe weather from that one event,? Snodgrass said. ?What it exposed though, was what was behind it, which was all the dust being pulled out of the plains where the drought areas. But you think about what this upcoming spring means in terms of severe weather, we’ve already had an outbreak in March in Iowa, we’ve already seen the recovery after some brutally cold air in Wisconsin, it’s already started to warm back up, and with each pulse of warmer air we start to increase the risk of severe weather. So, if we’re already getting this going now, remember this is just the very beginning of our severe weather season, it reaches a peak at the end of May, and it’s going to continue through July.?
Gearing up for the growing season, Snodgrass said La Nina increases chances of drought expansion.
?Right now, we’re still dealing with a La Nina, and it’s fading way slower than I thought it was going to fade,? Snodgrass said. ?I thought we’d be done talking about it by May or early June, and the latest data suggests that it’s there and it’s still kind of kicking and screaming its way out. So, what does that do? Historically, that does increase the risk of drought expansion between the central plains and the Midwest and the Great Lakes. Is it a slam dunk forecast? No, it’s not, because a lot of different factors can come in and change that around. But it’s one of those years where, if we take our normal risk, we’ve added about ten percent to it on the risk of developing here.?
Snodgrass added that he?s very concerned about the drought in the west.
?California, Southern Oregon, parts of Nevada, they’ve now had their dry start to any year going back to 1893,? Snodgrass said. ?Reservoirs are less than 50 percent of full pool and the snowpack in the mountains is down between 50 and 60 percent. So, they’re about to end their wet season anyway, it stops at the end of April and they go all the way to October without much precipitation, If any at all, because they have a Mediterranean climate. They’re just going into this already hurting and that’s going to mean that water allotments out of the reservoirs are probably going to be very tightly controlled this year. I’m very concerned about what’s going on California right now.?
Make sure you stay safe and tune in to your local weather provider when severe weather strikes. You can also visit weather.gov to keep track of severe weather alerts as they come out.
