Potential La Nina
The return of La Nina later this year. As USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey notes. Back on August 14th, the National Weather Service issued a La Nina watch for the possibility. And we’re looking at about a 60% likelihood of this happening of La Nina forming sometime later this autumn or into the winter months. If it does occur, it will be the fifth time in the last six winters that we have seen either La Nina or La Nina, light conditions across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Speaker1: So what are the potential impacts for our country if La Nina becomes established later this fall or winter? Speaker2: One of the impacts is to see drought tending to spread, particularly in the western and southern part of the United States. Speaker1: Not news most of the extremely dry western U.S. wants to hear regarding a potential future weather forecast. You might remember Brad Rippey mentioning earlier about Lydia established or Lydia like conditions five of the past six winters. Speaker2: Going back to the winter of 20 2021 and extending through the winter of 20 2223. We saw what we call a very rare triple dip, La Nina, where we had La Nina for three consecutive winters in records going back to the mid 20th century. We have only seen that two other times. Then we followed that with a single year with El Nino that lasted from 2023 into 2024, and then during the winter of 20 2425, we saw conditions that got very close to the scientific threshold for defining La Nina. Speaker1: And that triple dip La Nina period to begin the decade continues to impact southwestern states. Speaker2: We’re still trying to claw our way out of that drought as we move through 2025. During that triple dip La Nina, we saw a two and a half year period from late 2020 into early 2023, where we saw more than 40% of the contiguous United States experiencing drought. You get that cool water. It tends to cut off some of the tropical atmospheric moisture from reaching the United States. And that is one of the big reasons we tend to see increases in drought coverage in the western and southern United States during La Nina. Meanwhile, then as we move into the southern United States, concerns there as we move on to the winter months would be impact on rangelands. Pastures feed for cattle as well as the upcoming winter wheat crop. So certainly La Nina does come with a set of risks for agriculture. Speaker1: Yet, Rippey reminds us, it is only a La Nina watch, not a fully developed La Nina climate pattern.