While the remnants of Hurricane Cristobal drench much of the eastern U.S., USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey has his eye on signs of drought in the Plains.
“We have a classic flash drought situation developing across the Southern Plains,” Rippey told Farm Journal Live. “Last week’s temperatures getting up above 100 a number of days, 105 degrees in some places, and we have short term dryness that has certainly developed over the last several weeks there. Now you’ve got the heat on top of that, no rainfall in sight, and so the only benefit I see from this is it’s helping winter wheat to mature and be harvested very quickly. But it is not good for range land for pastures and rain fed summer crops. We’re seeing a lot of stress early in the season now.”
That early dryness draws some comparisons to the 2011 growing season, but Rippey points out there are some key differences.
“That year dryness started way back the year before around October 1,” Rippey explained. “But we are rapidly deteriorating, and I think if you look at the USDA NASS top soil moisture numbers for the week ending June 7 that just came out on Monday. 53% very short to short in Oklahoma. That’s a 30 percentage point jump from the previous week. We’ve also got some really big numbers coming in for Texas, New Mexico and stretching westward all the way to California. So this entire area, really the nation’s Southwestern quadrant has turned very dry very quickly. It’s being manifested in the form of wildfires, grass fires, and significant crop stress.”
Rippey said a La Niña may set up this summer, but it’s not likely to have a significant on the 2020 crop weather.
Watch Farm Journal Live in the player above for Rippey’s full forecast discussion.
