Some Drought Relief In El Paso, Surrounding Areas Expected This Summer

By National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center

A classic and very persistent La Nia precipitation pattern has dominated the country since Autumn 2010, resulting in broad areas of drought across the southern tier of states, in the southern half of the Plains, and along parts of the lower and middle Atlantic seaboard as of mid-May 2011.

Extreme to exceptional drought covers most areas across the southern Rockies, the central and southern Plains, the immediate Gulf Coast, and the southernmost Atlantic seaboard. Drought has been most acute through Texas and the southern High Plains where many locations experienced the driest October through mid-May period on record, in some cases by wide margins. Frequently high wildfire danger, dramatic agricultural impacts, and increasing hydrologic concerns have been felt throughout these areas.

Farther east, drought dates back more than a year in much of eastern Texas and Louisiana. However, an historic influx of water from the north wiped out any drought impacts in the large sections of southeastern Louisiana; specifically, in areas along and near rivers, across the region’s extensive marshland and natural levees, and through a large area east of the Atchafalaya River intentionally inundated to divert floodwaters away from the Baton Rouge to New Orleans corridor of the Mississippi River.

The La Nia precipitation pattern should gradually loosen its grip through late spring and the meteorological summer of 2011, leaving a lot of uncertainty about how drought conditions will evolve by the end of August 2011.

The mid-May 2011 Drought Outlook map was synthesized from a combination of initial drought conditions, current drought duration, forecasts for the last two weeks of May, and Climatology (especially whether June – August is a relatively wet or dry season) to varying degrees. Drought is expected to persist in the interior Carolinas and through much of Louisiana and adjacent areas, where drought dates back farther than in most other areas. In other existing areas of drought, the odds at least nominally favor some degree of improvement, though there is nothing pointing toward anything broad-scale and substantial.

To wit, the forecasts of “some improvement” and “improvement” for the parched areas of Texas and the southern High Plains were driven by the approach of a neutral to climatologically wet season (summer) which should provide at least some surface moistening, even if amounts aren’t unusually heavy. There is nothing to indicate that widespread, significant drought relief should be expected during the forecast period, though that of course is a possibility.

View the Seasonal Drought Outlook map here.