Past drought cycles as rain finally returns

One of the questions that's come up lately is how the ongoing drought compares to recent drought cycles. I did some digging and found that since 2000, this is one of the longer periods of drought that Kansas has experienced. For the sake of this research, if at least 50% of the state was in some level of drought, I counted it. Following that, I found a 4-year cycle of drought back in 2011-2015, which would make this current cycle the 2nd longest since 2000. It is rare to find drought that persists more than 4 years in any one particular area, so we have to be nearing the end of this, but it may take several more months. 

This long-lasting drought does coincide with a very lengthy La Niña cycle (from 2020 to early 2023). And the El Niño that we had back in 2023 ended after less than a year - not really long enough to get us out of the predicament we are in now. 

La Nina barely even developed and is now gone and could be replaced by an El Nino. Note in the image below all of the orange/red showing up near the Galapagos Islands. That warm water is moving westward and could soon enough be in the area south of Hawaii (that's where we determine if El Nino or La Nina is underway). It would be most advantageous to have an El Nino to combat the ongoing drought. Those tend to be wetter patterns for Kansas.

What's on the way:

It seems that a persistent pattern of weak systems out of the West will continue. If we can keep the higher Gulf humidity in place, we will have the chance at rain. What is worrisome is that May is (on average) one of the top 3 wettest months of the year. Much of the state typically can expect 3-6 inches of rain throughout the 31-day period, but lately our luck hasn't been that great. 

Here's how late April looks for rainfall (compared to average) - keep in mind we typically can expect about .5-1" for much of the state during this time period. If the map verifies for us, you could expect over an inch in a lot of areas.

Into early May, the pattern shouldn't change too much. Repeated systems in from the West will hopefully still encounter deep, Gulf humidity. Average rainfall increases in early May too. If central Kansas ends up with "average", then it would be about .75-1", but western Kansas is forecast to be "wetter" than average, so in that part of the state, we could easily get around an inch.

I'd be concerned about rain shutting down from mid-late May. See the map below:

And a similar look from this particular computer model for mid-late May:

All of this to say that we could make some progress on drought improvement, but it definitely won't be over with anytime soon. It would be nice to have a wet summer ahead. That remains a possibility, but we need to see more data.

Thanks for reading!

Here we are waiting on rain... again

We did get some welcome rainfall to kick off the month of April, but suddenly, the waiting game is back on. How long will it be? The short answer is it could be late April before we see any decent, widespread chances returning. What makes this even more frustrating is watching the huge surplus of moisture continue to go south and east of Kansas - exactly the kind of rain we need to fill lakes and farm ponds.

There is a western system that is coming in around April 13/14: Expectations are low for rain

I don't have much hope on this bringing much moisture. It appears it will be another cold front that comes through with little to no widespread rain for Kansas. 

And then as we approach the start of the week April 21st, once again, high pressure "ridging" takes over areas from the Rockies westward. Again, not favorable for good rainfall in the central Plains. Upper level winds from the northwest are detrimental because most of the time the rich humidity gets pushed too far east of Kansas.

Here's the rainfall forecast (7 day compared to average) around April 15th: again, wish we had something different to display here.

However, late April looks more encouraging, but it may only be parts of the region that turn out "wetter" than average. This is the 7 day rainfall compared to average around April 30th.

All of this to say that I don't think we are moving into a wet period at all in the coming weeks. Based on the emails and messages I'm getting, several of you are fed up with drought. And sometimes it feels like we keep promising something just "8-10 days" out. Patterns are sometimes really, really hard to break out of, and as most of us are finding out in real-time, this one is no different. 

I will say this - most models going into summer don't show extreme heat. If we go into summer drier than normal (and that's my expectation), there's reason to be concerned that we "fry". However, I'm not entirely convinced that we are going down that road just yet. While there will be plenty of hot days, it may not be that rough.

Tornado count:

It has really exploded in recent weeks. As of April 3rd, we are now experiencing one of the busiest starts to the season since 2010. Note the graph below. The red line is the trend for 2025, while the solid black line represents the "average" throughout the year.