Texas drought forecast to extend into 2012

Following worst year ever

Jay Blazek Crossley, Jan 10, 12.

The Texas drought, which made 2011 the worst year on record, is expected to continue at least through the late spring, according to Texas Climate News:

After enduring the record-setting heat and dry conditions of 2011, drought-weary Texans are being greeted with forecasts of more of the same for the new year.

The U.S. Drought Monitor, a government-university consortium, issued a report Tuesday with this alert for the central region including Texas:

Following a relatively wet finish to 2011, the return of warm, dry weather to the nation’s southern tier could be suggestive of an increasingly La Niña-driven atmospheric regime. If true, a return to dryness would not be favorable for the south-central U.S., where long-term drought retains a grip. For example, 80 percent of the rangeland and pastures in Texas remain in very poor to poor condition, according to an early-January report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
On Thursday, the National Weather Service issued its latest Seasonal Drought Outlook, for the period from Jan. 5 through March 31, which featured a map showing persistence of drought conditions across virtually all of Texas, with “some improvement” expected in a small sliver of the northeast corner of the state and “drought development” in four remaining and smaller areas in North Texas and the Panhandle.

A report by the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center, also issued [PDF] Thursday, cautioned that the La Niña weather pattern, generally blamed for 2011′s brutal drought conditions in Texas, was expected to last into the spring.

The center’s report said, “the latest observations, combined with model forecasts, suggest that La Niña will be of weak-to-moderate strength this winter, and will continue thereafter as a weak event until it likely dissipates sometime between March and May.”

Reuters, in an article discussing the La Niña report’s economic implications, noted that that weather pattern “can last for several years.”