A major contributor to the waterway struggles we have seen not only on the Colorado River but also the Mississippi River and the Panama Canal is drought.
Drought was a big part of agriculture and shipping this year, and World Weather Incorporated says that the issue began three years ago.
Founder and Senior Ag Meteorologist for the group says that when we entered 2020 farmers immediately experienced La Niña, which resulted in the dry conditions that we have been dealing with ever since.
According to Drew Lerner, “We still have drought in all those same places. The drought in the U.S. obviously is further to the east than it was in 2020 and 2021, so that’s where the route is. Of course, it’s been impacted by first La Niña and now El Niño, and we’re still dealing with the same issues. We thought maybe we would see a change with El Niño coming around but that so far hasn’t been the case.”
Despite incoming rainfall in the forecast, Lerner expects many in the ag community to deal with drought for another year.
“We still have drought on the Drought Monitor right across a big part of the central U.S.; portions of the plains and the western Corn Belt are still dealing with that. The good news is that this is autumn, and that should get cooler right? We’ve had a crazy warm autumn so far, and that hasn’t helped our moisture profile much, but what we’re concerned with is that we’re not going to be able to generate a lot of moisture coming up from the Gulf of Mexico because the dominating weather pattern this winter will be very classic El Niño, which is a northwest flow,” he adds.
El Niño is predicted to bring cooler air periodically, but not a lot of moisture, which will make it difficult to get rid of drought entirely in the new year.
