Hi-Line Farm & Ranch December 2015: Ag producers could see less moisture

With the strongest El Niño in nearly two decades expected to last through the winter months, local farmers and ranchers could be seeing less snowpack and possibly a dryer agricultural year, though experts say exactly what will come still is unknown.

“El Niño is going to have an impact on our weather, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re not going to have winter-type weather,” said Bob Hoenisch, National Weather Service meteorologist in Great Falls. “It just will affect, kind of, the overall average.”

El Niño is a weather pattern in which the temperature of the water in the Pacific Ocean along the equator is warmer than normal. That typically brings a warmer and drier-than-normal weather pattern to the northwestern part of the United States, including Montana, and often cooler- and wetter-than-normal patterns for the southeast and east.

But that is contrasted by the forecast from The Old Farmer’s Almanac, which calls for a cold winter with a “slew of snow” predicted for the northern Plains and Pacific Northwest, as well as the prediction from the Farmer’s Almanac, which predicts near-normal winter temperatures with occasional bitter cold for the western Great Plains and milder-than-normal temperatures in the Rocky Mountains along with above-normal precipitation for the northern Great Plains states and in the Pacific Northwest.

Meteorologists look at the weather patterns

But Weather Service and Weather Channel are betting on the temperatures at the equator bringing warmer, dryer weather to the region.

A report from Weather Channel predicts much-warmer than normal temperatures for December across Montana and stretching into most of Wisconsin.

That forecast predicts warmer-than-normal temperatures across most of the central part of the country from coast to coast, with cool to much-cooler temperatures across the southern part of the United States.

A National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration long-range forecast on the U.S. Drought Monitor shows that is expected to continue through at least March, with more normal temperatures returning to the central part of the northern United States by late spring or early summer. Warmer temperatures still are forecast in northwestern United States including in Montana West of the Continental Divide and into north-central Montana.

The forecast predicts warmer temperatures will return to most of the state by the fall.

The Drought Monitor forecast also calls for less precipitation than normal across Montana in the early winter, with more normal levels returning by late spring and early summer, although a dry spell is expected in western Montana in June and July.

A low-snow winter with some needed moisture over the summer

In Montana so far, things already are starting to dry out.

The Montana current water supply and moisture condition map on the drought.mt.gov website shows extremely dry conditions along the Rocky Mountain Front from Glacier County to Powell County, and Lake County also in extemely dry conditions. The rest of the western part of the state and over to Broadwater and Gallatin counties is listed as in moderately dry conditions, as is Judith Basin County.

Liberty and Chouteau counties, along with other counties just east of the Rocky Mountain Front, and most of the the southeastern quarter of the state are listed in slightly dry conditions. Hill and Blaine counties are among the quarter of the counties in the state listed as in near-average conditions

Last winter produced odd water weather for the state. With low snowfall over the winter, drought conditions could have hit early, but high levels of rainfall at times helped offset that shortage.

In north-central Montana, the moisture conditions depended on where people lived and what rain fell. By harvest-time this year, conditions varied greatly within counties, such as some portions of Hill County receiving enough rain to expect at least decent harvests — although hailstorms destroyed that expectation for many in the region — while others were looking at yields pummeled by drought conditions.

The region received fall rains that helped bring up the moisture levels going into the winter, however.

At the Havre recording station at the Havre City-County Airport, Weather Service recorded 1.67 inches of precipitation for September compared to an average for the month of 1.12 inches.

In October, the slightly drier month on average, Havre recorded 1.06 inches of precipitation compared to a norm of .58 inches.

By late November, the total precipitation recorded in Havre was staying above the norm for the year, although precipitation coming less frequently was reducing the margin.

By Nov. 23, Havre had received .30 inches of precipitation for the month — with snow in the forecast for the next few days — compared to an average of .33.

For the calendar year, Havre was at 11.60 inches of precipitation, compared to an average of 10.60 for that date.

For the water year, measured from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, on Nov. 23 Havre was at 1.36 inches for the year compared with an average of .91 inches.

Havre was just more than normal for the previous water year, recording 11.81 inches of precipitation by Sept. 30 with an average of 11.20.

What the winter will bring

As to exactly how much snow and cold the region will see, it’s still anyone’s guess.

Meteorologist Hoenisch said the impact of El Niños is that the system typically raises the average temperature and drops the total amount of precipitation. Storms — and some cold weather — still can hit.

The warm waters at the equatorial Pacific Ocean push across the northern part of the United States in an El Niño, generally keeping the cold air from pushing down from the north.

“Oftentimes what happens is the storm track is split and you have storms that come into California and track across the southern part of country, but the northern portion of that split tends to kind of keep the coldest air in Canada and not so much dropping down into the north-central U.S.,” Hoenisch said. “It doesn’t mean that that can’t happen. It just won’t happen as often. So, instead of having multiple cold-air outbreaks we may only have a handful of times when we experience that really cold air, like subzero weather.”

He said the El Niño system this year is strong — the strongest recorded since 1997 — and is likely to persist through the winter.

A few degrees of average warmer water temperatures over a long time can make a major difference, Hoenisch said.

“Half-a-degree above the long-term average is considered warm,” he said. “It’s currently about 3 degrees above average, and that’s considered pretty significant.”

In the shorter term, the Weather Channel forecast Nov. 23 called for colder weather — highs in 20s and 30s and lows in the teens and single digits — and a few snow storms in the last week of November. The forecast predicted continued highs in the 30s and 40s with lows in the 20s the first week of December, with no significant snow in that longer-range forecast.

Havre Daily News reporter Pam Burke contributed to this article.

Montana Drought and Water Supply site: http://drought.mt.gov

National Drought Monitor: http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu

National Weather Service Great Falls page: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/tfx