LATEST DROUGHT FORECAST BRINGS MIX OF GOOD AND BAD AS GOVERNMENT ISSUES DROUGHT COMMISSION REPORT May 16, 2000 For drought-stricken areas of the United States, there is both good and bad news. The good news is La Niña, the weather phenomenon responsible for bringing drought conditions to some parts of the nation for the past two years, is expected to continue diminishing for the next several months. The bad news is above-normal temperatures, which speed up the evaporation of precipitation and soil moisture, are forecast to affect drought-weary states for the rest of the spring into summer. The forecast, released today by NOAA's National Weather Service, is part of the National Drought Policy Commission's report on the impact of the drought in America. At a Washington press briefing among member federal agencies of the commission, Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Jack Kelly, director of the National Weather Service, said, "if we ever hope to lessen the blow of drought to the nation's farmers and other vital interests, the National Weather Service must continue to improve its forecasts and monitoring abilities of the meteorological ingredients that produce drought conditions." In its first-ever drought forecast released in March, the National Weather Service predicted the hardest hit areas would be: southern Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and Georgia in the south, and Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana in the central U.S. With its latest forecast, meteorologists still expect severe to extreme drought conditions to persist in Florida, Georgia, central west Texas, north Arkansas, southern Louisiana, southern Mississippi, southern and eastern Alabama, and western South Carolina. Severe drought conditions will also persist in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana and Illinois. The summer forecast favors below normal precipitation and warmer than normal temperaturesa combination that will lead to a worsening drought. The drought on the leeward areas of Hawaii will also persist. In New Mexico, where 250,000
acres have been scorched from Jan. 1 - May 10, only predicted
monsoon rains in July may bring relief to the parched landscape. "Rains like these can't erase overnight what two years of La Niña and long-term drought helped to produce. These are major precipitation deficits," Kelly added. (La Niña is defined by cooler-than-average sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific, which impact weather around the world.) And for states such as Louisiana, which has been its driest on record since May 1998, and Georgia the second driest on record, last week's surging temperatures worsened drought conditions. The forecast calls for more of the same. With yearly economic losses from drought hovering between $6 - 8 billion, which is more than floods ($2.41 billion) or hurricanes ($1.2 - 4.8 billion), Kelly said drought forecasting will continue to remain at the top of his agency's priority list. Kelly pointed to several forecasting tools produced by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, including the Drought Monitor and Threats Assessment, as evidence of the agency's efforts to predict drought cycles. The commission report cited the Drought Monitor as a prime example of inter-agency collaboration. "We are going to continue to warn America ahead of time when and where drought conditions are expected," Kelly said. Drought Forecast Highlights In the Midwest and Great Plains:
Along the Southern Tier:
For the latest drought forecast
see NOAA's Drought Information
Center.
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