Will The Recent Pattern Change Continue? Any Summer Red Flags? Looking at Fall & Winter Analogs!

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:03]Hey, good afternoon folks. Brian Bledso with you here, host of the Desert Farmer podcast. Thank you so much for joining me once again. It's been a couple of weeks since we had a chat. I've been very busy obviously with a lot of things going on, especially with the weather lately. So, I had a little bit of time this afternoon that I wanted to get back in touch with you so we could kind of go over what's been happening uh and what is likely to happen as we get deeper into this forecast. A couple of interesting points that I want to make in this podcast is that I take a look at how um you know strong and super El Nino of the past have greatly influenced precipitation during the fall and winter. And I know that that's a long ways out there. We have a lot on our plate to eat before we get there. But I still wanted to at least take a look at it for you. and it might, you know, kind of confirm some things that you may have thought or it might kind of dispel some of the myths uh that you've been hearing out there. Either way you cut it, I got a lot of stuff to get through today. Uh I don't want to waste a ton of your time walking you through a lot of the, you know, intricate details and the hardcore science and stuff, but I'm going to have some of that for you anyway. And we're going to start out with what has gone on over the past 30 days or so. And if we start up here in the northern plains, this is just from May 2nd through this morning, June 2nd, and you can see who's been benefiting from the recent rains and who has not. We've had some recent good rains up here across northern portions of Montana that's really helped to beat back some of the drought here across the far east and southeast uh portions of the state. We've been having some troubles here over southern South Dakota, far northern Nebraska. We've been doing amazing here in this area, all right, that I'm highlighting. And even across the southern half of Nebraska, if we come farther south here, you can also see who's been doing very well. A good part of Kansas has been doing well. Now, again, we have spots that have obviously underachieved with this pattern. No question about that. A few of those spots have been right here around Amarillo to extending back to the southwest toward Hurford, Texas. We've also had some issues here across parts of the northeast panhandle from Canadian uh back here to the southwest over uh southwest Oklahoma and right along Red River Valley and then we've had this avenue through the Concho Valley and also down here across uh far south Texas. So again, a lot of halves and have nots. And if you have interest up here in the cornbt, we've obviously been drying things out uh in this area of the pilot, which to be honest with you, actually needed uh some drying out. So that's what's going on the past 30 days.

[00:02:42]If we narrow the scope down to the past two weeks, well, the metrics changed just a little bit. It's just been the past two weeks have been solidly wet.

[00:02:51]North Central Montana, look at that.

[00:02:52]That is 752% of average in that past two weeks up there in the north central portion of the state. Even down here around Billings extending eastward over toward Miles City, we've done very well. The far northeast once you get northeast of Fort Peek and Glasgow, you know, obviously we've been shorted up there.

[00:03:10]We've still been shorted in parts of the the lease side of the Big Horns eastward toward Gillette and then farther south, we've done very well through here, okay?

[00:03:19]Through parts of the western Dakotas.

[00:03:21]Look at Nebraska. I mean, especially this sector right there, right through there. There are still some points out here in west and southwest Nebraska that are problem. We can't get a good rain in Sydney, Nebraska within this pattern.

[00:03:37]Even back southwest toward Cheyenne and Gley, uh it's been hard to come by. But you go just southeast of there and it's been excessively wet. um you know, Akran, uh over toward Kirk, Yuma, Ray, down here toward Burlington, uh those areas even in far as uh down here for uh far farther south towards Cheyenne Wells. St. Francis, Kansas has been excessively wet up here toward Makook and Imperial. Then we've actually done fairly well here recently. You know, once you get east of uh Trinidad, out here towards Springfield, u Kansas has been great. Liberal and Hugaton have been doing okay. Um all the way down here toward Dallart and then it's been really I would say this sector here that has performed the best. It's patchy across the Texas panhandle and until today the eastern Oklahoma panhandle where we actually got some decent rain um you know around um Booker and Tyrone.

[00:04:36]Western Oklahoma has been problematic.

[00:04:39]Could use a rain here. I think there's a little bit of hope in that, especially central and east as we go forward. And then if we look at the past 14 days up here in parts of the cornbt, well, some areas have struck out completely. But that owes to the pattern. We saw this pattern uh just what we've seen in the past couple of weeks is a microcosm of what we saw back in 2023 where we lit up the western high plains and we dried things out a bit in the upper Midwest.

[00:05:03]So, it'll be interesting to see if that kind of continues or if we're going to break that down. I'm going to share some of that information with you today.

[00:05:09]Let's look at the current short-term drought index and also the updated climate prediction center drought outlook. I know a lot of you probably checked this out uh when they released it. You might have been kind of scratching your head a little bit and said, "Damn, you know, that was that was a big change from what we saw last month." So, let's look at that. Right now, the short-term drought index, it was just updated yesterday. You can see who's been problematic. I think we're going to get some help in this up here across uh Montana. You know, parts of Nebraska have been doing okay. We've ate away at that here across a good part of uh northeast Colorado. We still have it going on here across the western half of Kansas down here certainly into parts of the panhandle, but we've just been we've just been, you know, pretty soggy and I know there are exceptions here. All right, I know there are exceptions.

[00:05:58]We've got one of those here in eastern Iowa and northwest Illinois. Part of that down here across northwest Arkansas. But again, a lot of the wet weather that's been happening here has been helping to beat back the drought.

[00:06:08]And we had a big rains here over parts of uh southwest Kansas. Dodge City picked up two and a half to three inches of rain last night. Dyon, Kansas picked up 4 inches of rain. Maxville, Kansas picked up uh you know, five to six inches of rain. Uh Nest City did very well. Eastward over toward uh you know, Hutchinson, we did very well. So there are places in this sector. All right, that are going to look differently, I think, uh, over the next week than what you've got right there. So, we've got some areas that we need to fix, obviously, but the pattern has been a whole lot better. Uh, this is the Climate Prediction C Center's monthly drought outlook. This just got released uh yesterday or a couple of days ago, I should say, on May 31st. All of this area that I'm highlighting, okay, all of this was essentially brown, especially up here over east and southeast Colorado, the western half of Kansas last month. All right, all of this in the inner mountain west was still there.

[00:07:08]All right, but we just had about one to five inches of rain here across Montana.

[00:07:13]That's going to go a long way in helping things out. We also have a little bit of drought development that looks like it's trying to take place here. Uh that's not surprising considering we've had a big old high pressure up here. Uh that has basically been keeping things pretty dry through this sector and funneling the better moisture situation farther west.

[00:07:33]Now if we look at the seasonal drought outlook, this takes you from June 1st all the way to August 31st. Look at it erode that brown. All right.

[00:07:44]All of this area here farther south.

[00:07:47]It's either we're getting some improvement, no drought, or drought removal is likely in the green. And then you have some drought development possible up here across parts of the Dakotas, Minnesota, and uh eastern Iowa, southern Wisconsin, and in the northern parts of Illinois.

[00:08:04]You also have some of that going back here into the Pacific Northwest, which to be honest with you, I think this sector, all right, back here over the Northwest probably has the greatest opportunity to see some rapid drought expansion. But down here to the south and southwest with a bigger monsoon on the way, and we're still getting rain sprinkled here through the southern plains, uh the Climate Prediction Center drastically changed things. I talked a lot about that in May uh on previous episodes of the Desert Farmer podcast because I was a little bit unsure and just kind of scratching my head a little bit about why the Climate Prediction Center just went crazy with dryness in this sector, you know, for the summer.

[00:08:46]It done a complete 180 here in some parts of the area. So obviously they're picking up on some parts of not only the trend that's been happening but also uh their main their flagship model the NME came in not as dry with certain parts of those regions. Now one area that I do disagree with and I'm going to show you some information that might suggest uh you know as to why it's different. I would say this sector here that I kind of highlighted, if we are going to see some flash uh drought development take place as we get deeper into summer, I'm a little bit concerned about that.

[00:09:21]That's especially true right there. So, this is an area that we're going to have to watch, but I just wanted to throw that out there to start things. All right, let's talk about what the Madden Julian oscillation is going to look like right through early July. For those of you that may just be joining me on the Desert Farmer podcast or have seen the reference of the MJO or the Mad Julian oscillation before but may not know what it is, all it is is just deep thunderstorm activity that's tied along the equatorial Pacific and it will oftent times start over in the West Pacific and then it propagates eastward uh on a cycle. Sometimes that's a 30-day cycle, other times up to 60, but it propagates along the equator. Uh, and when you get into a leninia or an El Nino episode, a lot of times the MJO can become somewhat stagnant and not do a full cycle through all of the phases.

[00:10:12]But that's what the MJO is. It is incredibly important in our subseasonal forecast. Although, as we get into summertime, a lot of times the MJO signal becomes a lot more diffuse if you don't have something really driving it.

[00:10:27]But we obviously have the rapidly developing El Nino that's going on. So when we look at the European extended model here, this takes us all the way through July 2nd. And here we are up here. Okay, that's where we are. Pretty good signal up here in phase 7. And then the forecast wraps us into phase eight, comes back out into a weak phase 7. So really what the model is suggesting is we spend all of our time in one way, shape, or form in phase seven, 8, and one. I don't think we've got any activity over on this side of the of the graph over here on the on the right side. So that's what the European Extended is. The Bureau of Meteorology actually has a stronger MJO signal and actually some pretty good agreement in that. You can see over here with the the spread of those lines isn't nearly as great, but it does the same thing.

[00:11:20]strongly rotating phase 8 coming back through phase one and then coming out right there weak phase 7 weak phase 8 basically nothing over here it's 781 what about the GFS the extended GFS model uh the the lines are a little bit more shotguned all over the place here but in general terms the signal is still to favor in some way shape or form this area right here. So, while the the finer details of how the MJL is going to propagate, uh, you know, is still somewhat in question, the phases that it's likely to propagate through 781 are are pretty much locked in there with those three models. Now, if we look at the May, June, July precipitation composits, all right, here's phase 7 right here.

[00:12:13]All right, so you can see drier in the upper Midwest and we've got wetter conditions. New Mexico, which is what we're seeing right now, a good part of Texas, and for down here along the Gulf Coast.

[00:12:26]When we go to phase eight, look at how that moisture just lights things up in the plains through phase eight. Really from Texas all the way to Montana and the Dakotas. And then when we come back out here into phase one, we still kind of have the remnants of that pattern where the middle part of the country is essentially, you know, somewhat wetter than average right there. So, uh, phase seven, the longer we spend in phase 7, I would say the more likelihood we have of kind of magnifying some of that dryness that we have going on in the Midwest.

[00:12:58]Um, and that's especially true in Iowa, Wisconsin, and uh, northern portions of Illinois where you've been, you know, driest lately. The farther east you go, we haven't had any problem getting rain into eastern Nebraska or even into eastern Kansas, at least as of yet. But temperature- wise, phase 7, we have warm west, cooler east. Phase 8, we have kind of a just a cooler feel across most of the country. All right, no huge heat signal here. And then phase one, this is when we start to see some heat build back up here uh across parts of the west, particularly northwest Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. So those are the predominantly uh or the predominant temperature regimes associated with 78 uh and obviously into one. The southern oscillation index is also very important with this. Here's what we have done lately.

[00:13:56]Look at that 30-day SOI running tool -14.14.

[00:14:02]The average for the last 90 days -6.

[00:14:06]All right. So you can see that the southern oscillation index after say we got past the early to middle part of May has done nothing but continue to to crash and you can see the the the changes that have taken place. March, April and May over year back in March we were firmly leninia. April we really made that shift. Okay May we continued it especially the last half of May where we've come down and our daily contribution to that is still at a negative 16. We don't get excited to truly leninia status until we get above positive seven or El Nino status until we get below a negative 7 and we are firmly below that negative seven which means the ocean and the atmosphere are talking and the weather pattern is uh is responding to that. The trade wind forecast over the next couple of weeks again that's starts tomorrow goes right through June 17th. Uh you can see down here on the lower part of the graph what we've got going on here where we have all of this westerly wind bursting going on. All right. Very impressive westerly wind. Just solid westerly wind burst over here in 781.

[00:15:21]That's where your MJO is going to live because of what we've got going on here with these westerly wind bursts. And that generally gives rising motion to the eastern Pacific Ocean because that that's where it's suggest uh suggested that it's going to stay. This is only going to continue to enhance our El Nino development. All right. I don't see this slowing down. That is a very strong um westerly wind burst signal that we have going on that's continuing to facilitate uh the El Nino. When we look at the European extended model, uh, sea level pressure anomalies, this is from June 2nd today, right through July 2nd. This is what we have. You see the blue that's over here, all over here, this is that rising motion associated with lower pressure in the eastern Pacific. Over here around Indonesia and Australia, we have sinking motion uh associated with high pressure over here. So that's why we during an El Nino we have to worry about rapid drought development in Onia in Indonesia, Australia, up here around China. All right? And that's why a lot of times we don't have to worry about drought development over here because we fire up the Eastern Pacific hurricane season. Eventually we fire up the monsoon, so on and so forth. So that's in response to that. If we look at how it evolves just in that 30-day sliding cycle from say June 17th to July 17th, do you see how it kind of deepens even more? All right, especially over here in the Eastern Pacific. Over here in the Western Pacific, it kind of stays somewhat stagnant with that high pressure here over Indonesia and Australia. But this is a very classical El Nino look where we have lower air pressure in Tahiti and higher air pressure in Darwin, Australia. That is a classic signature of an El Nino. Okay.

[00:17:14]And a strong one at that. Meanwhile, we have this big old surface high pressure that continues to just sit here. All right. Sit right there. So, when we look at the temperature and precipitation anomaly, all right, this was for today, which is June 2nd, right through July 2nd. Temperature anomalies, which is are interesting. Try to spread some heat out here into the plains. I I think we're going to have it back here for sure. I'm not as convinced about out here in the plains. Even though you get even when you get farther east, all right, from just say we do a line from say Bismar to Oklahoma City, right there, anything east of there is not warmer than average. There's no strong heat signal that is appearing there. So even if we have to navigate a little bit of dry time in the cornbt from time to time without any powerful heat signal, that enables us to skate through some of those drier times without just blowing things up as far as heat goes. From a precipitation anomaly standpoint, again, uh, from today right through July 2nd, this is the this is the 30-day precipitation anomaly field that you get. Look at that, right? wetter than average here in uh along the Missouri Valley and into the cornbt, even down in the Mississippi Valley. Now, you the the stoutest of those dry signals, I would say, definitely favors that area. All right, out here into the west and northern high plains, I think the signals are going to be a little bit more mixed, especially since we've been shoving water in the soil. But there is a pronounced wet signal with the monsoon development starting to take place right here through northern Mexico, west and southwest Texas, New Mexico, eastern Arizona, on up here in the southern portions of Colorado. Now, what I want to do is slide this uh out, all right, and take you in 7-day increments. So, this would be uh the 7-day forecast from today right through June 9th. So, you get a little bit of dryness. This is again, this model runs every night. So, this was from last night's run. You get a little bit of dryness up here in the northern plains with that next storm system coming in here in in about 7 to 10 days. I'm not so sure that that's going to play out here, but you get a wet signal here in the middle part of the country, drier east and southeast.

[00:19:35]And then you're still wet down here across New Mexico, Texas, and most of Oklahoma, which would be real nice if we could get some wet weather in western Oklahoma for sure. I'm going to put this into motion and show you the sliding 7-day scale as we take you into the middle part of July. I'm going to let it go for a couple of times here. There is no gigantic drought signal that reappears here for most of the midsection. Now, there at the end, you do see a little bit more of a dry signal here from Iowa southwestward in the eastern Kansas, Oklahoma, and the eastern half of Texas. All right. But in between that time, do you see anything scary there? At least the way this model suggests it, you don't see anything scaryness. Look at this, though. Look at that pipeline as the monsoon gets going here, uh, coming northward out of Mexico, in eastern Arizona, New Mexico, and obviously into Colorado. And we keep some dryness going up here in the Pacific Northwest. So, it's interesting that what would happen here and we can just kind of, you know, put this put this to it is if we don't have a big stout dry signal and we continue to put water in the ground, that is going to really help us navigate even just some short-term dry cycles as we go through the summer. uh because we will inevitably see some heat, but if we can't lock in some big awful nasty ridge of high pressure, um then our drought potential goes way down. And I think we've seen a lot of that operate in the markets lately, the grain markets, uh where they've kind of removed the threat of drought from those markets over the past few days. Uh I think that owes to a lot of areas continuing to get some rain. Let's look at the current state of the oceans. What we've got going on here back on January 1st was very reflective of the leninia situation that we have going on. You can clearly see it here again January 1, that's what your sea surface temperature anomalies look like. What do they look like now? Well, we have changed a great deal obviously along the equator uh the equator uh where we have the uh El Nino going on. Really warm sea surface temperatures here off the west coast of South America, the Galapicos. I've seen some uh of those sea surface temperature anomalies be as much as 5 degrees Celsius above average. But a couple of interesting things have really showed up here. All right, I'm going to go back to the original one. I want you to watch up here and I want you to watch up here.

[00:22:10]Most importantly, do you see the change here? Most notably, look at the cool signal here in the North Atlantic. That's impressive.

[00:22:21]We've also deepened kind of, you can see a little bit of a cold horseshoe there, although we've got a little bit of warm water in there. I'm always watching for colder than average water up here in the Gulf of Alaska. And you might ask yourself, well, why have they had that up there? Well, because we've had storm systems going like this. And when we do that, those storm systems churn up the water and allow cooler water from beneath to come to the surface. Is that a signal that's going to continue all summer or not? I don't know right now. I think it's worth watching in the midst of everything else. But I will say this, when historically whenever we have this type of cool signal in the North Atlantic and we have a very positive Pacific meridional mode here. All right.

[00:23:11]A lot of times we don't have to worry about moisture in the middle part of the country, specifically the Great Plains, even if we have a little bit of cooler water up here. As long as it isn't terrible uh and widespread, and as long as we continue to keep the Pacific meridional mode warm, then that helps to offset dryness that develops in the middle part of the country. Plus, we've got the El Nino going on here, too. All right, so a lot happening. We got to look at both the Pacific and the Atlantic. And if you want to go clear out here into the Indian Ocean, too. The warmer our Indian Ocean gets, the more it helps and aid the development of this this El Nino that's going on, too. All right, this is the same look at the graphic. All right, a little bit differently. We've got Indonesia over here. All right, West Coast of South America over here. You can clearly see the warmth at the surface. Beneath the surface, we've got some really impressive stuff going on here, too. We have really significant warmer than average water here in some cases all the way down to about 200 uh and 250 meters.

[00:24:16]This warmth right here was in response to the Kelvin wave that made its way across the Pacific in April and May.

[00:24:23]That warmer than average water in some way, shape or form, not to this magnitude, but it still has to come to the surface. So the the stage is set here for this El Nino to continue to develop and strengthen and likely end up being a significant one. Another thing that I'm watching is another Kelvin wave that's developing over here in the Western Pacific that is also likely to advance eastward across the Pacific because of our westerly wind burst that we have going on. So, not only do we have the remnants and of this really strong Kelvin wave that gave us a giant shove into the direction of El Nino, uh, but we have some reinforcements coming out here, uh, in the West Pacific.

[00:25:07]That'll be something that we're going to have to watch going forward. But El Nino is here. It is coupled with the atmosphere. It is working and I think those forces are only going to continue uh, as we go forward. This is essentially the Nino 3.4 4 region that has changed since back here on March 1st when we were down here around negative.2. We're all the way up here to 1.2. We have done nothing but change it almost a degree and a half Celsius since the early part of March. Probably well not even probably the most rapid transition out of uh Leninia to El Nino that I've ever experienced. Um and we told you that that was going to happen for quite a while. So it should really come as no surprise but I'm just putting any other metric on it. If we look at the latest forecast from the Bureau of Meteorology, uh this is the relative Nino index. All right, this takes into account the latest changes that Noah and the Climate Prediction Center have made in determining the potential strength of this upcoming El Nino. Even with this modified metric that we just did, by November, we are out there at about positive 3 degrees Celsius above average here.

[00:26:24]Here's where we are now in June. All right. So, we continue to see our development and then we kind of level off. Those gray lines are different members of the uh of the model that that shows that. And you can see that the spread there isn't huge. It certainly isn't huge in taking us to firmly in strong El Nino territory by August. So the you can you can read whatever you want on the internet or on social media or whatever, but anybody that tries to tell you that we're we're going to rapidly collapse this El Nino or it's not going to be a strong event or whatever, uh I think is feeding you a line of crap. I think the one um thing that we have to monitor going forward is just how strong is it going to get. Uh is it an all-time record setter? You know what? That's on the table. Does it fall just short but ends up into strong territory? That's possible, too. It doesn't necessarily matter. I think this event is going to be a significant player and continue to be a significant player in our weather as we skate through the rest of this year and likely as we head into 2027. How long does it last beyond that? I think that's up for debate. Do we carry it through spring and then collapse it? Do we collapse it before spring? Remember, the stronger this thing gets, it's going to take a longer period of time for us to unwind that strength. All right, let's look at some seasonal model data. The Canadian seasonal model came in uh on June 1st, uh full run of it came in and uh it's always the first seasonal model to update. So, let's see what it has to say for June here. Uh temperature anomalies, look where it places the the best heat again, west and northwest. a little bit of that up here, I think, in response to that big ridge of high pressure that we've had set up over Hudson Bay. All right. And it keeps things pretty cool here in the middle part of the country.

[00:28:26]Now, I think the temperature anomalies with the Canadian model may be just a bit overdone. All right. In the cool on the cool side, but since January, it has had the middle part of the country having a cooler than average summer and it's still there right there today. So, I think the remainder of June uh and how much more rain we continue to get is probably going to have a huge impact not only what June temperatures are going to be like obviously, but also what happens for July because not only does it keep it, it doubles down. Look at that signature across most of Kansas, western Missouri. This is a pretty classical El Nino signature here in the middle part of the country. So, even if we don't totally materialize things the way the Canadian is suggesting, the fact that we're here at a 30 and 60-day forecast and it has that signature, I think is worth at least paying attention to, at least for right now. It also tends to keep the heat centered out here in Washington, Oregon, northern Idaho, northwest Montana, and up here into British Columbia. and some of that around here. Obviously around parts of southeast Canada and the Great Lakes in August, same signature.

[00:29:40]Best heat northwest, also northeast, middle part of the country, no huge heat signature. September continues, we fire up a bit more heat west.

[00:29:51]All right, October signature is still there. otter west, especially northwest.

[00:29:57]Very common for an El Nino, especially of this magnitude.

[00:30:01]And then if we go to November, same signature.

[00:30:05]December, we cool things off a little bit up here uh across the Great Lakes and uh northern plains. the inevitable temperature trend. And again, you may have seen some of this stuff out there on the internet and social media is that if we have what's called a strong MOI El Nino, where the warmest water out there on the equator kind of ends up in the center part of the Pacific, a lot of times we can get cold that punches in here uh during the winter time. Is this going to be a moi El Nino? I don't think so. I do not think so. I think this El Nino is going to be in a much more uh traditional eastbased El Nino type of event versus something that's centered a little bit farther west. Still have to watch it. Still have to watch it. But that's my take. Let's look at the precipitation anomalies. June to December. June, same story as it did last month. A lot of wetness here in the plains. This is also owing to the fact that it's cooler than average temperature forecast. All right. Little bit drier than average up here to the northwest. That's also typical in June.

[00:31:13]Uh especially if we miss out on this next rain event uh up here across Montana. But that's its June forecast.

[00:31:19]July monsoon starts to kick in. Has this wet sector here, right? A little bit drier than average, you know, along and north of that line. Nothing horrendous, just a little tick toward it. August monsoon with that moisture coming this way.

[00:31:41]No huge dry signal in the midsection.

[00:31:43]September we keep it wetter through that monsoon. Probably some tropical storm stuff still going on here from an active eastern Pacific hurricane season.

[00:31:55]October that looks like a big old subtropical jet to me. Drier northwest very typical of El Nino. November, same story. Dryness northwest, subtropical jet rip in there. December, a little bit different. All right.

[00:32:11]Little bit different. We'll have to see how this plays out, but it still keeps things wetter that way. I would say it probably has a better shot to keep things wetter south, too. I don't necessarily buy this stuff here. Okay, let's see what the Climate Prediction Center's doing. Its updated forecast was a huge update. As I said, remember it had solid dryness here for the summer.

[00:32:39]Doesn't have that anymore. June, July, August. It actually places the dryness up here over parts of the eastern Dakotas, Minnesota, and in the Missouri Valley. Nice monsunal plume there. All right. Dryness farther northwest. If we go to temperatures, your main heat signal is still out west. A little bit of that spills into the plains, but nothing here. All right. So maybe the Canadians onto a little bit of something here. July, August, September, monsoon's going. If we are going to have some flash drought, as I mentioned, this is the area I would be more concerned about. All right, the east and southeast halfs of Texas down along the Gulf Coast. All right, some of that may briefly extend up here into eastern Oklahoma, maybe southeast Kansas.

[00:33:24]Otherwise, you've got dryness up here.

[00:33:26]Little bit of dryness going on there.

[00:33:28]Temperature- wise, I'm still thinking the biggest heat signals out here. But look at this. Climate prediction center even has a little bit of that cool here across parts of the middle part of the country. Interesting, right? August, September, October, monsoon and late tropical moisture still going. No huge dry signal anywhere except maybe the Pacific Northwest.

[00:33:49]Temperature- wise, we are still warmest out west.

[00:33:52]Nothing showing up as far as a heat signal here for August, September, October.

[00:34:00]Tropical moisture still going.

[00:34:02]September, October, November. Dryness here. Heat still focused out west, not in the middle.

[00:34:10]October, November, December. Again, active with that subtropical jet drier north. All right. You could probably even extend some of that dryness farther east and kind of connect the dots through here would be my guess. Maybe even back here over southern California too. And with the temperatures very classical to see the northwest and the northern tier of the country warmer than average and the middle part not so much.

[00:34:36]So that's what the updated climate prediction center forecast suggests. Uh we'll have another update in about 3 weeks uh with that maybe a little bit less uh between two and three weeks but that's what they're saying for now.

[00:34:48]Let's look at the analoges here. June to December just the analog years. First of all let's look at June the June mean temperature anomaly for 72 82 975 and 23. Those were the last years, all right, that had a rapidly developing El Nino that went to a strong El Nino as we got later in the year. All right, we're already going to be at a strong El Nino by August, but some of these years took a little longer to make that happen. But these are the just the temperature anomalies for June. And again, notice the general trend toward cooler than average here across a large part of the country until you get up here in the Northwest where it's warmer than average there precipitation wise.

[00:35:31]Does that look familiar?

[00:35:34]Little bit of a dry signal for June's there.

[00:35:38]Wetter west. Okay. Also wetter farther east and northeast.

[00:35:45]What about July? July cooler than average farther northwest. All right.

[00:35:51]Are we going to have that? Is that what the model is suggesting? Probably not so much for this area. Okay. It'd be warmer than average there.

[00:36:02]Precipitationwise, you start to see some drying out take place down here across central and east Texas. A little bit of a dry pocket here in southwest Nebraska.

[00:36:14]Little dry there. All right, but it's kind of checkered. The interesting thing about July is that during these Elino events, the monsoon is often a little bit delayed here. Okay, see the dryness here in southeast Arizona, southwest New Mexico. That's not to say that it's not present. Or what might be happening is the monsunal moisture ends up a little farther west and comes up here into uh you know parts of the northern Rockies and then gets dispersed out into the plains. But the signal for wetter than average is still pretty stout these years. Kind of sandwiched in between these dry layers here. What about August? August we ended up being cooler east. Temperatures kind of mixed out here across the west. Little tick toward warm northwest. I would agree with that.

[00:37:00]Maybe a little bit of warmth here in central Texas. If we dry things out, you know, it's going to get warmer. And the dryness there for August. You can clearly see. All right.

[00:37:11]Parts of Oklahoma, East Texas, the Gulf Coast, big old monsoon. A lot of that moisture coming around like that or over the top. Not a huge dry signal here in the middle part of the country, though.

[00:37:24]It's mostly biased down here farther south and along the Gulf Coast. If we do temperature or precipitations in September or temperature in September, we return to warmth here, coolness out west. All right, probably due to the seasonal change. And then if we look at uh precipitation, we start getting active in the west and we start to have some lingering dryness here, make it a little farther north through eastern Kansas, Missouri. All right, maybe a little bit of dryness up here across the eastern Dakotas and western Minnesota, but other than that, nothing horrendous.

[00:37:56]So, I still think if there's going to be flash drought, you have to go down pretty much into this sector. All right, that's where the greatest opportunity for flash drought in my opinion would be because if we dry things out in that general area in July, we probably stay that way in August and September unless we get some type of rogue hurricane or tropical storm to come up from the Gulf, which during an Elino episode, uh the chances of that as we get deeper into the hurricane season are progressively less.

[00:38:29]All right, not out of the question, just less. Uh for October, we're cooler out here. As we bring storms in like this, we are warmer over the top.

[00:38:41]Precipitation wise, pretty wet. Southern tier. Little bit of a dry signal here.

[00:38:47]All right. But we are still wetter over the top, at least for October with that seasonal change. And certainly the farther south you go with that subtropical jet. November coolest out here in the west with our active storm track.

[00:39:02]Precipitation wise storm tracks blasting. The only dry area of any consequence I think would be up here or drier area I would say. But again, this is just a composite of all five of those years. December temperature- wise historically has been a blowtorrch here. All right. And we're cooler out here where we still have active weather coming in.

[00:39:27]Precipitation wise, interestingly enough, Decembers of these Leninia episodes haven't encompassed a lot of dryness anywhere. Even the Pacific Northwest and across parts of the northern Rockies did okay. Parts of the Sierra out here in California, ironically, struggled. But look at the look at the wet signal in these Decembers here. These are strong El Nino episodes. All right. So, it's interesting to see that. So, what I did, I wanted to just simply look at the strongest of the strong here and see what the fall and winter precipitation anomaly look like for these. And we'll break down some states here for you. So, we're looking at 82,83, 97, 98, and 1516. We're looking at Colorado. First of all, shout out to Fort Morgan, Sterling, Ray, Lyman, Burlington, Lana, Lamar, and Springfield. All right. You can see here during the fall for September, October, November, the green bars when they go past that dashed line, that means above average. So Sterling was the only one of those cities that actually fell just short of average moisture for that time. All right, for the fall. everybody else. All right.

[00:40:37]Especially when you get down here, uh, you know, to Lahana, Lamar, and Springfield, we're at 125 to 140% of average precipitation. Typical, right?

[00:40:49]Southern branch of the jetream means wetter. For winter, December, January, and February, again, the farther north you go, you fell short. Fort Morgan only 94% of average. Sterling only 91% of average. But Ray, Lyman, Burlington, Lahuna, Lamar, and Spring. Look at the totals here. All right. Anywhere from 120% of average to 150% of average means the odds are better to see more frequent snow and more snow during that period of time. Interesting, right? Let's look at Kansas. Kansas tells us somewhat of a similar story. Again, green is fall, blue is the winter. So, look at this for Hayes.

[00:41:32]Witchah and Topeka fall moisture fell a little bit short especially for for Witchah Topeka and winter snowfall fell short in Witchah and Topeka too. The other locations were actually better.

[00:41:47]But look at this. Okay, Garden City 118%. Liberal 125%. Dodge City 121% of average when it comes to snowfall with those really strong events.

[00:42:02]Nebraska, Shadron falls short, Valentine falls short, Grand Island, Omaha, even North Plat falls just short. Uh Sydney, ironically enough, which can't score a rain of any consequence right now, actually ends up being above average, not only with fall, but winter moisture right there. And Makook's in the same conversation. It's real close there, too. Imperial uh as well, but you can see some of those other cities actually ended up being a tick drier than average.

[00:42:35]What about Oklahoma? Look at this for Oklahoma. Like impressive, right? For these years, all of them were above average. And for G, look at the snow. 150% of average.

[00:42:50]Boy City, 164% of average snowfall.

[00:42:54]Woodward. Okay. Althas, even down here toward Enid, Tulsa, Oklahoma City. Impressive moisture there with these stronger El Nino events. That's especially true out here in the panhandle. All right.

[00:43:09]Impressive stuff there. What about Texas?

[00:43:14]Same way with Texas. Impressive signals.

[00:43:17]Dhart, Plane View, Amarillo, Canadian, Childress, Abalene, Leach, and Midland.

[00:43:21]Very impressive. In fact, snowfall for Lach 192% of average. I shouldn't say just snowfall. I should say precipitation.

[00:43:29]Plain View 182%. Amarillo 178%.

[00:43:35]174% of average right there in Midland for winter moisture. And fall moisture was was impressive, too. But even more impressive was uh was the winter moisture. And for New Mexico, New Mexico is impressive, too. All right. Clayton, Clovis, Hobs, TA, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Cusus, and Deming. All up there with impressive fall moisture, but even more impressive winter moisture. All right, I know that's a long ways out there, folks, as far as what we're looking at.

[00:44:05]We have a ways to go to see how this El Nino actually really gets going and matures, uh, especially as we wrap up summer and go into fall and early winter, which typically fall and winter is when it usually maxes out. And then we have to be cognizant of how long it lingers as we head into 27 and see what that means. But if nothing else, all right, especially for those southern plains, those south and west high plains which just get absolutely punished with dryness and drought during leninia episodes. I know we have some things to fix in terms of, you know, ongoing dryness and drought right now, but boy, the pattern over the past two to three weeks and in some cases the past four weeks has been so much better than what we had seen lately that got us into the the trouble uh in the first place. So, as long as we keep this El Nino cooking along where some of those real significant impacts start to resonate again in fall and winter, I'm pretty optimistic about what we have going forward. It's not going to be perfect for everybody. And a lot of times those El Nino influences I just showed you dampen the farther north you go, especially once you get north of I7. So, for those areas farther south, um, you know, that's kind of what we see, at least for the time being. Folks, I hope you enjoyed the information. It was so great to get back on here and chat with you. If you have any comments, questions, feedback, please just put them in the comments right there. If you need to get in touch with me, I'm not that hard to find on Twitter, just Brian Bledsoe. Or you can simply just email me, brianbrianbleds.com.

[00:45:43]If I don't chat with you in the interim, I will be chatting with you again here real soon on the Desert Farmer podcast.

[00:45:48]Take care.