Plains drought & severe weather

[Matt Hunt]

Forgive me if this topic has been discussed before... I didn't find anything recent. I don't know much about climate, but what effect would the current drought have (if any) on severe weather potential? It seems that the plains have been very quiet in recent years, aside from a few isolated days here and there.

 

[Stan Rose]

Forgive me if this topic has been discussed before... I didn't find anything recent. I don't know much about climate, but what effect would the current drought have (if any) on severe weather potential? It seems that the plains have been very quiet in recent years, aside from a few isolated days here and there.

The lack of evapotranspiration i think is certainly one factor, though by all means not the only one, in the relative lack of severe storms, especially over the panhandles/TX last few years. Thankfully it looks like April may turn out pretty moist for E CO, so im hoping that will set us up for a good season in my area!

 

[James Gustina]

Forgive me if this topic has been discussed before... I didn't find anything recent. I don't know much about climate, but what effect would the current drought have (if any) on severe weather potential? It seems that the plains have been very quiet in recent years, aside from a few isolated days here and there.

It definitely seems like sfc moisture mixing out/a rapidly eastward advancing dryline is the biggest issue from the drought, hence why the classic chase regions such as the TX PH and far W KS have been struggling overall in terms of great days. Heck the last decent PH day I can think of with multiple tornadic supercells is April 22, 2010. The High Plains haven't been anywhere close to as active as they were prior to the onset of drought, aside from one or two big days (April 14 for example).

 

[Logan Karsten]

I would argue that the lack of severe weather over the last couple of years has more to do with the large scale pattern than it does local drought conditions. Now, that's not to say that the drought hasn't had an impact on the western high plains and TX panhandle. With severe drought firmly in place there, it's relatively easy to have a dryline mix out of the region further east, leaving those clasic regions high and dry from severe weather. The pattern the last year and this year have favored large cold intrusions into the plains during April, essentialy cutting off any potential. Last year at this time, the snow cover extent was abnormally large across the northern plains and midwest. This leads leads to less cold air mass modification as it plummets south, and clears out the Gulf. One has to remember there are several factors that need to come together for a large scale severe weather across the plains, and the drought only has impact on some, but not all of those factors.

 

[Mike Johnston]

Not sure there has ever been a real comprehensive study on the relationship of drought to severe weather, although there have been some minor regional studies. One thing to keep in mind is there are periodic droughts west of the 98th meridian and that's been true for many decades, if not much longer. This area (the great plains) is variously called a sub-humid or semi-arid region. Basically, water is more or less a scarcity there. I do believe evapotranspiration has a role in humidity, although to what extent has been debated on this forum many times.

 

[Paul Knightley]

I think when you have a decent fetch of moisture from the Gulf, and it's reasonably deep (i.e. up to 850 hPa), the condition of the ground is not overly an issue for storm development. However, the one issue you do have is the amount of dust around storms - May 23rd last year in the southern TX Panhandle springs to mind - tons of dust in both the inflow and outflow of storms.

There are some hints that a wetter pattern may start to develop as we go into May, which can only be good news for the drought-stricken areas.