Central Ohio just wrapped up an unusually dry August.
Columbus saw only 0.61 inches of rain all month — well below normal — and folks are starting to notice crunchy lawns and thirsty gardens.
Fortunately, there’s some rain in the forecast this week, but it brings to mind last year, when parts of Ohio saw the state’s most intense drought in a quarter century.
Aaron Wilson is an Ag Weather and Climate Field Specialist with OSU Extension, and Ohio’s State climatologist.
Matthew Rand: What's driving this current dry spell?
Aaron Wilson: Yes, certainly we've had a major weather pattern shift. Most of the spring and into the summer, we had a really conducive pattern that led to plenty of rainfall. In fact, for Ohio going back to 1895, the four-month period of April through July, that's the eighth-wettest April through July on record. Of course, that pattern has drastically shifted now. We've been under really a dome of high pressure. Really a lack of rainfall during the month of August. We've got locations, many locations, well, the entire state below average for the month of August, but we've got some locations that have seen less than a tenth of an inch over the last 30 days, which is well below average for August standards and certainly has led to those dry and even drought impacts that we're seeing across the state.
Matthew Rand: What are you hearing from farmers right now? How does this late-summer dryness affect corn and soybean crops, as well as livestock?
Aaron Wilson: I think what folks are seeing...rapid sort of change in field conditions right now, is as crops are rapidly drying down this season. You know, the lack of rainfall during August probably had an impact there on things like soybeans. It would have been nice, I think, to have a little bit more rainfall on those. When you think about specialty crops though, there's a little kind of a decrease in sort of that disease pressure as things dry out later in the season. So, you know there's some maybe positive or benefits to that. And with the dryness then as we head toward harvest, what will likely become more of a concern, if this pattern holds, is an increased fire risk. This is something that we saw pretty widespread across the state last year with those drought conditions in September and October, but as we've dried out pretty rapidly here over the last 30 days, I think the fire risk is really going to start to increase as well.
Matthew Rand: Are there any lessons from last year's drought that communities and farmers are learning from and applying this year?
Aaron Wilson: Well, I think in general for all of us, you know, regardless of what we're, you know, our profession, water conservation is always a good idea. You know, when things start to get low like this, we start to think really seriously and perhaps we should more often, but think about preserving water, is sort of that first line defense.
This is a really good summer for sort of an example of what we're seeing more of here in Ohio, which are rapid oscillations or rapid change from extremely wet to extremely dry. So whatever we can do, in terms of water management is really, I think beneficial, not just to the farming community, but natural resources and even in our municipalities and our cities as well. Those opportunities to conserve water, manage water in a thoughtful and mindful way.
Matthew Rand: And finally, you know, as we look toward the fall, what are you watching out for?
Aaron Wilson: Our latest guidance from the Climate Prediction Center certainly doesn't lean too strongly either way in terms of precipitation. Although what we know is that when this pattern sort of gets entrenched in an area, it can start to continue to dry out just a little bit until we get a major patterns shift. Right now, this pattern that we've been in one thing that's kept us from seeing even impacts is the big cool down. You know, we've had very comfortable, very nice temperatures over the last couple of weeks, mostly below average or below normal for this time of the year. And that's really kept maybe the impacts from being even more severe than what we're seeing right now.
It's looking like temperatures will be warmer than average throughout much of the fall and the harvest season. In precipitation, I would have to lean a little bit drier, but we really don't have a strong signal either way. And then as we head into this upcoming winter, all eyes are back into the tropical Pacific Ocean. It looks like cooler sea surface temperatures are resuming there, what we call La Niña. And oftentimes in Ohio, winters become wetter than average during those conditions. So, you know, it could be a winter where we again start to kind of replenish some of the soil moisture loss that we're feeling here late summer and early fall.
