Is El Nino a for sure thing? If so, it could mean something different soon

The new drought map just released Thursday (May 18) does show some improvement across northwest and some of southwest Kansas, but as you already know, so much more rain is needed to solve the problem that started over a year ago. Right now, 87% of the state is in some level of drought, with 35% at the highest category (exceptional)

La Nina, which essentially started taking over in late summer of 2020, was such a big contributor to the development of drought. At its strongest (La Nina), water temperatures were more than 1°C colder than average, which may not sound like much but it's enough to create some different weather patterns that allowed drought to expand for months. A satellite image from December shows the La Nina across the equatorial Pacific. The area of blue is much more widespread than the area that is actually monitored to make the determination of El Nino/La Nina. 

Now, you can see the warmer colors (oranges and reds) replacing the shades of blue near the equator. We have made a quick turnaround in about 5 months. It's remarkable, actually. The quick onset of the El Nino gives me some serious hope that timely rains are now just part of the forecast. 

Where we go from here seems to be well understood at this time. As you can tell from the image above, the water is warming and should continue to do so for the next several months. Look at the graph below. It shows where we've been and the latest trend - all pointing toward a warming of the water near the equator. We will soon be in El Nino and it looks very much like it will be the dominate influence in our patterns for fall and winter. Keep this in mind when we start looking ahead and making some predictions about those seasons to come.

If we are in for an El Nino influence for summer (even if its weak at the moment), there's reasonable hope for a more comfortable summer. I'm not saying we won't have some hot days, or even some brief stretches of 100s, but it should be a far cry from last summers intense heat and drought.

It is a limited amount of data to show you here, but if history repeats, look at the summer months from 2015 and 2019 when we had El Nino in place.

Almost all of the summer months were near or slightly cooler than the average. 

Here are the maps from the summer of 2015:

If we look at summers of 2019:

Rainfall for the summer months was mixed (both above and below average):

We can't say that it's all sunshine and roses from here on out. There will still be dry stretches of weather and some months that are not as generous with rainfall. However, I will say that the worst of the drought should be in our rear view mirror. Getting our reservoirs, farm ponds, lakes and streams back to some kind of normal takes more time. If you believe some of the maps below (and they are just models - not always a guarantee), we feel that better days are to come.

June outlook for rainfall:

July outlook:

August:

Have a great day.