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!