Drought and La Niña update

11-14-24. 3:15pm. This Drought and La Niña update is brought to you by Dietz-McLean Optical. www.dmoptical.com

I’m guessing you don’t need me to tell you that the drought conditions are getting worse again this fall. Despite a few big rains, the drought is bouncing back quickly after diminishing this summer.

We continue to have a decent chance for rain on Sunday-Monday ahead of and along our next cool front, but the best odds will stay north of a Del Rio-San Antonio-Houston line…more on that tomorrow. After that, we chill down and get dry for at least the next 7-10 days.

The latest, monthly ENSO update is out, and it continues to look we will have weak and short-term La Niña, which means this may or may not turn out to be a typical La Niña winter after all. For more on that, please see the graphic below and what the CPC has to say about it:

“The IRI plume predicts a weak and a short duration La Niña, as indicated by the Niño-3.4 index values less than -0.5C (Fig. 6). The latest North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) forecasts are cooler than the IRI plume and predict a weak La Niña. Due to this guidance and La Niña-like atmospheric circulation anomalies over the tropics, the team still favors onset of La Niña, but it is likely to remain weak and have shorter duration than other historical episodes. A weak La Niña would be less likely to result in conventional winter impacts, though predictable signals could still influence the forecast guidance (e.g., CPC's seasonal outlooks).”