by SEAN KIMMONS
The wet, cooler temperatures associated with the weather phenomenon El Niño are fading away, and may soon give way to dryer, warmer conditions produced by its little sister, La Niña.
Local agriculture workers have flourished under the downpours courtesy of El Niño over the past year. However, La Niña weather patterns could yield significantly less rainfall and spark renewed drought conditions, experts say.
Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that La Niña has developed in the Pacific Ocean and is expected to strengthen and continue through the winter.
“El Niño brings weather systems farther down south, so we typically see more rain,” said Meteorologist Amanda Fanning, who works at NOAA’s New Braunfels office. “With La Niña, weather systems tend to stay farther north, so strong cold fronts usually don’t make it down here.”
Past La Niña cycles intensified drought conditions that plagued Central Texas for two years, Fanning said. However, she said it’s hard to say if this winter’s La Niña will bring on another drought.
Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, who also serves as a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, said that the recent severe drought of record first surfaced in the fall of 2007, which was followed by two La Niña cycles.
“Two consecutive La Niña winters helped make this drought particularly severe, while the current El Niño conditions have helped to end the drought,” he said in a news release.
Using San Marcos figures compiled from NOAA’s website, one can see drastic changes in rainfall over the past three winters.
From September 2007 to February 2008, San Marcos recorded a meager 3.48 inches of rain. The following year, from September 2008 to February 2009, the city had only 2.72 inches of rain. Both winters had a combined total rainfall of 6.2 inches.
In contrast, El Niño dumped more than 22 inches of rain on San Marcos from September 2009 to February 2010. As much as seven inches of rain fell in just October 2009.
Michael Lehman, one of the last remaining full-time farmers in the Kyle area, is seeing huge crop earnings due to this year’s rainfall.
“This year has been one of the best yields in crops we’ve ever had,” he said.
The 40-year-old, who began farming as a young child, manages 2,400 acres of crops that sprout around Kyle.
In the previous two farming seasons, his family had “tremendous losses” because of the drought, he said.
He recalled only harvesting 60 out of 700 acres of his cornfields, and less than half of his other crops last year.
This year, he’s counting on all of his crops being harvested.
“It went from a complete disaster to a complete success,” he said. “Every acre is good.”
Lehman and others could be faced with another disastrous drought if La Niña has its way on the region again. But for now, Lehman is concentrated on reaping the benefits of the harvest.
“Honestly we haven’t thought about it a whole lot but it’s something that we have to be concerned about,” he said.
If a drought arises, Lehman said that he may have to switch his cornfields to cotton, a more drought-tolerant crop.
Time will tell how much rain Hays County will soak up this winter, as most dynamic models are predicting a moderate-to-strong La Niña cycle, according to NOAA’s announcement.
La Niña temperature and precipitation impacts over the United States are typically weak during summer and early fall, but strengthen considerably during late fall and winter, the announcement says.
