What are the primary weather events being watched by the leading ag meteorologists right now? Here’s a round-up.
A Bit of an Oddball La Niña
“We need to be really careful about making big assumptions about this La Niña. It is not a classic La Niña,” says Drew Lerner, World Weather, Inc. He points to two large rain events in the southern U.S. Plains this past week.
USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey adds southern California has also received a lot of precipitation. He says it’s the timing and strength of the La Niña bringing a different pattern than could be expected.
“The big thing we’re watching is the fact that we’re in a La Niña during the month of September for the fifth time in six years,” Rippey says. “And with that, November’s been a little bit strange so far. We haven’t fully kicked into what you would expect to see with a La Niña regime.”
More Precipitation on Its Way
“We also have a lot of warm ocean water between Hawaii and California, so watch for more heavy rain, like we saw this week coming into California a little later in the winter,” Lerner says.
Rippey says people across the Great Plains can expect more storms through this week.
“Given the fact that we are heading into a La Niña winter, we need the moisture across the southern Plains now,” Rippey says. “It looks like more of a La Niña regime setting in for the latter part of November and certainly by Thanksgiving. By that I mean stormier, colder weather across the north, and some of that warm and dry weather should become more established across the South. It’ll be a while until we get there.”
The week of Thanksgiving is showing some increased chance for winter storms and perhaps travel-impactful weather events.
Droughty Conditions Bring Concerns
Dry weather persists in key grazing areas, which Matt Makens from Makens Weather says is his biggest concern for the rest of this year and early into 2026.
Lerner adds: “The northern Plains and neighboring areas of Canada’s prairies won’t see much precipitation. There’s still a big, bad drought up there, and they’re hoping for better moisture. But in the meantime, our wheat that’s in the soft wheat that’s in the lower Midwest bowl will get a nice drink of water.”
Pacific Storm Season Brought More Action Than the Atlantic
Reflecting on the ongoing hurricane season, Rippey says while it was indicated we could have an active season, there have been only 13 named storms and only five hurricanes.
Without any major storms making landfall in the U.S., Rippey points to a few factors:
- “We had the African feeder storms, the thunderstorms that come off the African coast, came off a little further north than they normally would. And that put some of those thunderstorm complexes into a more hostile environment as they developed or tried to develop,” he says.
- “We had a protective jet stream across the eastern United States, a little dip along the East Coast of the United States that really forced any developing storms to recurve before they ever reach the United States,” he says.
“A lot of that moisture ended up in the western United States eventually, remnant tropical moisture, and that certainly has helped to chip away at the drought across the western United States, courtesy of the active eastern Pacific season with 18 overall named storms,” Rippey adds.
Planting Season Outlook
While planting season is about five months away for many, the weather trends are tipping the scales to a slow start.
“I still have some confidence in saying that some of the northern areas of the country — northern plains, upper Midwest — could face a spring with a delayed warm-up,” Rippey says. “We could see some snowy cold conditions lingering into the early to mid-spring across some of those northern production areas. Typically coming out of La Niña, we do see a later planting season in the north, and we will have to watch drought in the south.”
La Niña Will Flip to El Niño
As for what’s ahead in the new year, Maken says while we might start with a La Niña, toward the end of the year, we’ll flip into an El Niño.
“And when you do this flip, it depends on how quickly it flips, because it can mean a lot of rainfall for a lot of folks,” he says. “And not that La Niña and El Niño are the end-all, be-alls, but they’re the major players in the room. Some really like hearing El Niño. Others really do not like the person saying that.”