Of course, they will worry about drought in the North Central area because drought at the beginning of a growing season can be problematic. The beginning of the growing season is a very critical time. It seems that they do not have to worry about a late start this year. But an early start has its own problems. Weather can be fickle.
Although this webinar focuses on the North Central states, many of the maps cover the entire 48 states in CONUS so there is something for everyone in this report. I did not comment on every slide as there were a lot of them. But where I commented, my comment is in a box. If you watch the full webinar (I provided the link) you get their commentary and the Q&A which was good.
| You can see the large number of much above-average temperature states. Many of these were in the North Central area. |
| The North Central had average to slightly above normal precipitation. It was very wet in the Northeast. |
| Jan to March shows a similar situation but more states were above average or much above average. |
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| This shows the El Nino pattern but not dramatically wet except in the Northeast. |
Many readers will need to click on “Read More” to access the remainder of the report which is very interesting.
| What is shown here is the water equivalent in the snow accumulation and then melt-off for the current year and the minimum and maximum for the three-decade period considered to be Normal or Climatology. This year is about the same as the minimum for both parts of the basin. It looks like the peak has been reached but we do not know what the subsequent months will look like yet. There probably will not be much more snow so it is all about meltoff and losses to evaporation or sublimation. |
| Here they are just showing the current year and Climatology and the current year is very much like normal but may have peaked a bit early. That is usually not good. |
| The ice is ALL Gone. |
| Phenology is the timing of things. It is an early Spring in this area. That suggests a longer growing season but there can still be killing frosts or flash droughts. |
| They have a bunch of forecast maps in the presentation that I have not included in this article. I just added this one and it may or my not have been in the presentation. It shows where it is expected to be drier than climatology for the June through August time period. The area in question is just on the edge of where drier conditions are expected. |
A PDF of the presentation can be found HERE
The YouTube recording of the Presentation can be found HERE.
The High Plains Regional Climate Center can be accessed HERE
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| I hope you found this article interesting and useful. |
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