Drought Update – November 20

Alabama remains in a serious short term drought; about one third of the state is in an “exceptional drought”, as defined by the U.S. Drought Monitor…

Since the first of October, a total of 1,844 wildfires have destroyed over 22,000 acres of land in Alabama, and a no burn ban remains in effect.

See a map from the Alabama Forestry Commission with current and contained wildfires here.

The Birmingham Water Works is in a “Stage 4 – Extreme Drought Emergency”… see their management plan here.

IT DOES RAIN IN ALABAMA: Showers moved through North Alabama early yesterday morning; here are some of the rain amounts…

Courtland 0.21
Huntsville 0.20
Decatur 0.19
Muscle Shoals 0.09
Cullman 0.04
Arley 0.02
Newell 0.02
Concord 0.02
Birmingham 0.01
Cottondale 0.01
Bessemer 0.01
Jasper 0.01
Clanton 0.01

The 0.01″ reported at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport means the streak of consecutive days without measurable rain is over at 61. Of course, a rain event like this is pretty meaningless when it comes to drought relief.

Here is a current look at the number of days in a row without measurable rain at official reporting sites…counting today (which will be rain-free)…

Tuscaloosa 64
Anniston 55
Montgomery 25
Birmingham 1
Huntsville 1
Muscle Shoals 1

HOW MUCH DO WE NEED? Here is a look at rain deficiencies since January 1…

Anniston 17.28″
Tuscaloosa 13.69″
Huntsville 12.56″
Birmingham 11.43″
Montgomery 10.95″

Droughts don’t start suddenly, and don’t end quickly either. It will take multiple long, soaking rain events for us to dig out of this. It will happen, but it takes time.

In some cases, short term droughts turn into long term droughts. Alabama has had five major long term droughts since record keeping began: 1929-32, 1938-45, 1950-63, 1980-82, and 1984-88. No evidence this happens now, but it can’t be ruled out completely.

NINE YEARS AGO: As noted above, 33.8 percent of Alabama is now in an “exceptional drought”… the short term drought in 2007 resulted in about 75 percent of the state being in the exceptional category…

This is a reminder that droughts have always happened, and they will always happen. Like severe storms, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes. They are a normal component of the climate system. Never pleasant, but we have to deal with them.

PATTERN FLIP: The blocked upper air pattern that kept potential rain producing systems away from Alabama has changed, the long awaited “pattern flip”. Some of you thought when it happened, the heavens would open and it could rain for days… no, it doesn’t work that way. The flip simply means the door is now open for frequent mid latitude waves traversing the region with potential for rain. Some will produce significant rain, others won’t.

Part of the problem is the drought feedback loop… soil moisture is depleted, plants and vegetation are dying, there is less water available for evaporation from the soil surface, meaning less water available for transpiration. It makes it very hard to break out of a drought. But, it will happen now that the pattern has changed.

RAIN OPPORTUNITIES IN THE DAYS AHEAD: Next chance of rain will come on Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve. About 1/4″ is a decent possibility, but only for the northern half of the state. Beyond that, confidence in a specific solution is low, but there could very well be some rain in 6-7 days (November 26-27), making for a complicated Iron Bowl forecast. And, another rain producer shows up the following week, about 10 days from now. No way to be specific beyond seven days, but here is model output (GFS) showing potential rain here through November 29…

There is some skill in pattern recognition beyond seven days, and the reliable European global model (the ECMWF) continues to suggest December will be active with multiple rain events. Here is the projected 45 day precipitation through the end of December, using the ensemble approach… showing potential for over 5 inches here…

Some in our field believe December won’t be as wet with the initiation of a weak La Nina, but understand it is VERY hard correlating ENSO phase with weather in Alabama.

ONE OBSERVATION: Sure looks like the Arctic Oscillation wants to stay negative for a while…

This tends to open up the door for colder air to invade the eastern two-thirds of the U.S…

You have to wonder if we might deal with some winter weather mischief sooner than later. We will see. It is interesting that many short term Alabama droughts end with a “bang”… severe weather, flooding, winter storm, etc. Not saying it happens this time, but we need to keep our eye on the ball. It is easy to be lulled to sleep in the weather business when you haven’t had active weather in many months.

CLIMATE CHANGE? Yes… the climate IS changing. Always has, always will. Unfortunately, this subject has become politicized, and with the current deep division in our country it is hard to discuss without ideologues with no understanding of how the atmosphere works diving in. Left wing and right ring activists say things with no regard for the truth in an effort to align themselves with a political world view. Science and politics are a very bad mix. See this essay I wrote two years ago.

The insane climate claims from the right and the left during Hurricane Matthew was enough to make our head explode.

Seager et al had an excellent peer reviewed paper after the 2007 drought (you can see the full paper here), and concluded “the post 2005 drought therefore appears to have been caused partly by atmosphere-ocean climate variability and partly by internal atmosphere variability, all of which is typical of what has been happening in the region for hundreds of years. The serious stress the drought put on social and agricultural systems in the region came about purely due to lack of adequate planning based on knowledge of regional climate variability.”

See historical data on U.S. wildfires here.

FYI… there is an “Alabama Drought Management Plan”… you can read it here.

“FAKE NEWS”: Lots of buzz about fake news sites being promoted across social media. One thing for sure, there are plenty of “fake weather” sites as well. We are now in the season where “Joe Bob’s Online Weather Center and Facebook Page” will be forecasting big winter storms 4-5 weeks in advance, knowing it will bring a wealth of clicks, likes, and follows. Dennis Mersereau wrote a great piece on this problem last year. Please, think before you share these bogus forecasts from boneheads that don’t care about a good forecast or the truth. It is all clickbait. I am seeing bad information about this drought floating around as well.

Understand, professionals get it wrong too. What we do is very difficult, but I would rather get my weather information from a credentialed meteorologist as opposed to “a dude named Ben” looking for clicks and likes. You can’t make some of this stuff up.

Look for AMS (American Meteorological Society) certification when searching for weather information. And, yes, I do hold an AMS CBM.

Stay tuned… we will dig out of this slowly but surely…

Tags: ANC, drought

Category: Alabama's Weather