24 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN December 2024 Winter Weather Outlook ERIC HUNT, PH.D. | AGRICULTURAL METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATE RESILIENCE EXTENSION EDUCATOR, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN The biggest weather story in northeast Nebraska this fall has been the rapid onset and intensification of drought. As of this writing on Oct. 18, only .03 inches of precipitation has fallen at the Norfolk Airport since Sept. 1, and some locations in northeast Nebraska have not had a drop of rain since August. Thus, this is easily the driest start to meteorological fall on record for Norfolk and most of northeast Nebraska. The acute lack of precipitation and long stretches of abnormally warm temperatures over the past several weeks means Norfolk and the surrounding region have rapidly cascaded into severe drought. History tells us that deeper levels of drought in the western Corn Belt are not eliminated in the winter since we simply do not receive enough precipitation in the cold season to offset the deficits that accumulate in the growing season. However, this winter will determine how desperate the moisture situation is in the spring. If we end up getting semi-frequent snowfall and sufficient cold to keep the snow around, then further deterioration is unlikely. There may even be some modest improvement if we can get a couple of decent shots of rain in November. But if the coming winter looks anything like the one from three years ago, then we will be starting off the 2025 growing season facing circumstances equally as bad as 2023. I don’t have a crystal ball to say which solution is favored, but the global modeling centers can offer guidance. The consensus is that a weak La Niña (the cold phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation or ENSO) will be in place this winter, and the winter outlook from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) is essentially a composite of what we tend to have during La Niña – a more amplified polar jet and a weaker subtropical jet. For us, the amplification of the polar jet stream in La Niña winters can bring rapid swings in temperature but also can bring in more sustained cold and more frequent chances of lighter snowfall events. La Niña is hardly the only teleconnection that affects our weather, and it likely won’t be a primary driver for our sensible weather until after Thanksgiving. Other factors such as sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific are important. The Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO), which is related to convection and clouds in the lower latitudes, also can have equal or even increased importance in terms of our weather during the winter months. For example, when the MJO is centered over northern Australia in the winter months we tend to be mild and wetter. When it’s centered closer to the central Pacific Ocean, we tend to be colder and drier. The CPC’s current outlook favors near average temperatures and precipitation for northeast Nebraska. This is basically a technical way of saying to expect a more normal winter for your area. If this comes to fruition, residents of northeast Nebraska may need the snowblowers a bit more frequently than in recent years, and December may be much more seasonal. For those who like analogs, the ones that make the most sense to me are the winters of 2017-2018 and 2005-2006. History and the current outlook suggest that it is highly unlikely that significant drought relief is coming between now and the end of February. The best-case scenario for getting drought relief would be a major pattern shift around Halloween that brings abnormal rainfall to the broader region before soils start freezing. More regular precipitation chances may start coming to the region around Halloween and there are hints in the European model that November may be wetter than average in eastern Nebraska. We need to hope that it is correct because that would put us on a path toward starting the 2025 growing season in better shape than we were in 2022 or 2023. ~NC~ PRODUCTION
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