Ag Weather Forum

Southwest Rains And El Nino

Bryce Anderson
By  Bryce Anderson , Ag Meteorologist Emeritus
Connect with Bryce:

We start this entry out with a cliche--"When it rains, it pours." That old saw is never truer than we are seeing this week, with the pounding, flooding rain associated with Hurricane/Tropical Storm Odile in the Baja, California peninsula and now moving into Arizona and New Mexico. Some of this rain also appears on track to move into the Southern Plains and give some dry areas of Oklahoma and Texas a welcome dose of soil moisture for winter wheat along with fall pastures.

It's interesting to note that this is a conveyor-belt of storms for that far southwestern region. We have heard much about Odile-related rain--but remember, it's only a week or so ago that Phoeniz, AZ was swamped by record rainfall from Hurricane Norbert, also in the eastern Pacific. Norbert did not track as far inland as Odile did, but it still was a big moisture producer. The Midwest got in on that act, too. Rains hindered activity at the Husker Harvest Days farm show in central Nebraska (I know)--and we saw from three to nine inches of rain move across the western and central Corn Belt during the September 8-10 period.

P[L1] D[0x0] M[300x250] OOP[F] ADUNIT[] T[]

So--Norbert, now Odile, and possibly another tropical system in the same area of the western Mexico coast, to be named Polo--are part of this early-fall weather time frame. It's something that is quite rare--in fact, the last time we had such a grouping of tropical systems on the western Mexico coast area was in the fall of 1976, 38 years ago.

There's another interesting facet to that rundown. In the fall of 1976 and through the winter of 1977, a weak El Nino was in place, according to NOAA criteria. And, as of Wednesday September 17, both the Pacific sea surface temperatures and the Australia SOI pressure readings were in--you guessed it--weak El Nino categories.

Official weather agencies have been repeatedly discussing the potential for El Nino to re-form this fall, after making a brief appearance in early summer. It looks like that is happening--which, among other features, tends to support the idea that the fall season could have above-normal precipitation as a feature. And, if that verifies, it would of course complicate harvest progress.

Bryce

Twitter @BAndersonDTN

(ES/AG/CZ)

P[] D[728x170] M[320x75] OOP[F] ADUNIT[] T[]
P[L2] D[728x90] M[320x50] OOP[F] ADUNIT[] T[]

Comments

To comment, please Log In or Join our Community .