Category: Posts EN

 

Major late-season winter storms hitting both coasts have been soaking up a lot of the headlines lately. But in the Plains, the story is quite the opposite. Months of below normal precipitation have led to rapidly deteriorating drought conditions (see below). Sections of the central High Plains have seen less than 10% of normal precipitation in the past month (see second image below). The official measuring station at Amarillo, Texas has recorded basically no significant precipitation since the first week of October! The Four Corners region as well as much of the Texas Panhandle, southwest Kansas, and western Oklahoma are facing extreme drought conditions. Some sections of northwest Oklahoma are even in the worst category, exceptional. In addition, quick-moving, relatively dry storm systems will result in periodic high winds and isolated thunderstorms through the next week or two. Wildfires become an extremely dangerous threat in this environment, and red flag warnings are in effect.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the long-term outlook isn’t very favorable for increased precipitation (see below). The global weather patterns meteorologists use to make long-term forecasts are called teleconnections. These teleconnections indicate a fairly stagnant weather pattern, at least for the next few months. They would favor continued dry conditions in the High Plains, and across the southern tier in general. That’s especially bad news as we move closer to the prime growing season.

 

 

Folks in the Northeast U.S. need look no further than their own front yards for a heavy blanket of snow and scenes of a winter wonderland. Accumulations of up to two feet (see map below) combined with high winds have led to hundreds of thousands of homes without power. It’s the third time in two weeks that a blizzard-like storm has wreaked havoc across this region – some communities are buried under several feet of heavy, wet snow. While snow is diminishing across parts of the region, portions of Maine and Maritime Canada will see additional accumulations well into tonight and early Wednesday morning.

 

 

Ironically, today (March 13th) is the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the most intense and impactful winter storms in recent history, one that dropped several feet of snow in one storm! The March ’93 Superstorm (satellite image below) plastered a swath all the way from Alabama to eastern Canada with feet of snow, setting records up and down the Eastern Seaboard and Appalachians. It also produced a severe derecho across portions of Florida and Cuba with widespread damaging winds. It even produced a hurricane-like storm surge over the Gulf coast of Florida that measured up to twelve feet, costing dozens of lives in Florida!