What does this spring look like from an agricultural perspective? Wet? Dry? A little bit of both? Jamie sits down with a USDA Climatologist based in Ames, Iowa to talk weather. Are we in a drought or not? You might be surprised at the answer. Listen in and find out what kind of weather might be coming your way.
Dennis Todey is the Director of the Midwest Climate Hub for the USDA in Ames, Iowa. He is a native Iowan with a BS and PhD from Iowa State in Meteorology and Agricultural Meteorology. He has spent two stints in South Dakota, first completing his MS at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and most recently as Associate Professor and State Climatologist for South Dakota at South Dakota State University. He is well-known regionally as a speaker and media source on various climate issues and is the former president of the American Association of State Climatologists.
Jamie Duininck (00:02):
Today on the Water Table Podcast, I’m interviewing Dr. Dennis Todey, head of the Midwest Climate Hub in Ames, Iowa. We’re going to talk all things climate. We’re going to talk about how the past several years have affected us and what he sees for this year in regards to our moisture situation and the potential drought. Welcome to the Water Table Podcast. Today, I have Dennis Todey with me. Dennis is the director of the Midwest Climate Hub in Ames. He is a native Iowan. He has a BS and a PhD from Iowa State University in meteorology and agricultural meteorology. He has spent stints in South Dakota first completing his MS at the South Dakota School of Mines in Rapid City, and most recently associate professor and state climatologist of South Dakota and South Dakota State University. Please welcome Dennis to the podcast. Thanks, Dennis for joining me.
Dennis Todey (01:06):
Happy to do it. Hope everybody’s having a great day.
Jamie Duininck (01:08):
Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s fun to visit here. We’re in the spring of 24. We had kind of an unusual… not even kind of, we’ve had a very unusual winter here in the upper Midwest and not a whole lot of moisture. And then just the temperatures for me, and that’s something I wanted to visit with you about, get your expertise. But the temperatures are what have been astonishing is so many days above freezing and even nights that didn’t get below freezing in months like February and early March. So let’s talk a little bit about that.
Dennis Todey (01:47):
Sure. It has been an interesting winter and we can chat about the causes and there’s been some pluses and minuses from the ag community as to what the winter did for us. You’re right, most of the winter, except for a couple week period in the middle of January, was very warm and that was not unexpected given one, we had a very strong El Nino. El Nino winters have a stronger tendency to be warmer in the upper Midwest and Morthern Plains.
(02:17):
And then overall climate issues, our winters are warming. So that combination really, it didn’t surprise me how warm we were overall. Yeah. And then when you combine that with a lack of… well, we had some precipitation, more of it fell as oddly rain than snow. And then when you look at the northern part of the Midwest, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and you look at the snow totals for the winter, it is truly astounding how little snow there really was. And that contributed additionally to the warmth and it’s kind of a chicken and egg sort of thing that you don’t have snow on the ground. It allows the soils to heat up more quickly and the temperatures don’t get as cold just because there’s not as much snow up there.
Jamie Duininck (03:02):
Yeah, and I’m glad you kind of started with that. It brings me back to the beginning of the winter and right before Christmas around the 20th, I can’t remember exact dates, but of December up here in central Minnesota, we had three and a half inches of rain. And if that rain ends up being snow, it probably changes the entire winter because it’s around the whole time. It holds the temperatures down and it’s for sure in the overnight hours. And it’s probably much more of a normal, not necessarily from precipitation standpoint, but from temperature standpoint, much more of a normal winter. And so just interesting that we are probably a couple of degrees away from having a very different winter in those days. And that’s just my theory, but you’re the expert and how do you think about that?
Dennis Todey (03:57):
Well, yes. I mean, putting snow on the ground early in the winter does change the situation certainly earlier. It might not have hung around as long as we would’ve expected it to. In central Iowa, we had two storms within a week’s period that in Ames dropped around 10 inches of snow each with some additional in between that. And you think, “Oh, okay, yeah, that didn’t last long.” 10 days or so after that, all that snow was gone because we got warm again. So it is a little bit of chicken and egg. Certainly if we’d had snow on the ground earlier, would’ve changed the dynamic, but we didn’t. And the snows that we did get weren’t deep enough and didn’t hang around very long.
Jamie Duininck (04:37):
Yeah, yeah. So let’s back up. What’s causing all this? Why are we in the situation we’re in?
Dennis Todey (04:45):
From a temperature standpoint? From-
Jamie Duininck (04:47):
Well, both ultimately, but we’ll start with temperature.
Dennis Todey (04:51):
Again. When we have El Ninos and we’re talking about changes in sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator, when we have El Ninos, which are warming of the waters closer to South America, that changes the storm track and changes how things look over Central North America, we’re not directly connected to it, so it is a bit indirect, but there’s a fairly good signal that the stronger the El Nino, when we have an El Nino, we are warmer during the wintertime. So that was a big player. The other big player is if you look at our temperature changes, what’s going on, a lot of our warming that’s occurring is occurring in the wintertime in our cold season, which has different, interesting effects, especially when we’re talking about water and how the soils were. That’s a whole other thing we should probably examine as to what the warm soils did from a soil moisture standpoint.
Jamie Duininck (05:51):
So off track a little bit here, but when you talk about warmer winters, I’ve noticed, and I don’t know if it’s real or if it’s just because of the things I’m doing in my life that I think this, but it seems like over the last 10 years we’ve had much more cool, wet springs and long-drawn-out drier falls, and are we seeing that or is that just kind of my reality?
Dennis Todey (06:27):
And I guess it’s what your definition of fall is is what you look at. Certainly there are a couple things that we are seeing. One in the way of winter is some of my colleagues and climate services, we’ve talked about this a little bit and we haven’t put many details on it, but there has been a bit of a shift over the last 10 or 15 years or so where we don’t get as much cold early, but we get cold late in the winter and that carries over into the spring a little bit, not all the time and not bad, but we’ve had a bit more of that where we’ll be relatively warm and then the colder than average actually occurs late winter, early spring.
(07:11):
Now in the way of a fall, if we want to look at what’s happening in the way of season length and the way of when our frosts and freezes are, that’s a whole other component with that. We are definitely seeing a lengthening of our frost free season, especially northern areas of the Midwest. Our first fall freeze is getting later, our last spring freeze, the trend is not as strong, but it’s also getting earlier. So we’re lengthening our growing season and shortening that frozen period where things are susceptible, that’s throwing plants in a whole other… in a situation we need to talk about. But that’s kind of some of the things that we’re seeing overall.
Jamie Duininck (07:49):
Yeah. I just think this is interesting, and I didn’t plan on asking you this, but I just thought of it as you said that, freeze later and earlier in the fall and then earlier in the spring. Up here in Minnesota, we’re all familiar with lakes because we have so many of them. One of the things that I’ve done over the last 30 years is pay attention as one of my neighbors was recording for probably 60 years, the in and out of the ice date off the lake, the local lake.
(08:25):
And most interesting in that for me is that in the last 10 years, we’ve had the earliest ice out, which was this year, I think it was March 15, and we’ve had the latest ice out in the last 10 years of a 60 to 80 year period of time, which was May 8th. So that’s confusing to people like me that aren’t climatologists or aren’t into meteorology around if we have climate change and the earth is warming, why are we seeing such a variability where we’ve had the earliest ice out and the latest ice out within a 10 year period of time, even you could probably say five year period of time, but can you explain that?
Dennis Todey (09:14):
It is. See, that’s one of the other parts of the climate change issue that we are seeing also is bigger variability. There are certainly when you look at data, there are trends, but so you kind of focus on trends, but within that trend, there’s bigger swings, bigger swings back and forth that are part of that too. So yeah, I mean if you look at the overall trend in ice out data, I know the folks at the state climate office in Minnesota keep track of this, and they’ve noted this recently and later ice ends. And so for people who like their ice sports, it’s been a bit of a problem rescuing people off ice and things like that.
(09:59):
But there are some of these bigger swings that we’re seeing also, which is contributing to our tougher understanding and tougher explanation of some things because if you look back historically, there’s always some of this variation around some kind of an average. But when you get bigger swings around that, that becomes harder to predict and harder to deal with because if you think about it from an agricultural perspective, well we’ll just figure on average, even if the average is changed, we’ll assume that average. But if you’ve got wider variability between the high and the low, you’ve got a better chance of missing completely whatever average you’re trying to go for.
Jamie Duininck (10:40):
Right. Right.
Dennis Todey (10:41):
So yeah, it’s why even in the middle of warming winters, we still get extremely cold temperatures. The overall cold is still less, but we still get very cold temperatures like we saw this January and the cold a few years ago that made it all the way down to Texas and caused the problems in Texas. So the overall trend is warmer, but within that, there are embedded some of these extremes that are still way out of whack and hard to deal with.
Jamie Duininck (11:10):
Yeah, and I think one of the things that… and why you’re not the first climatologist, meteorologist I’ve had on the podcast and probably won’t be the last. And part of that is I think for me in agriculture, I want to see where and want our listeners to understand where the challenges and the opportunities lie as we see what you just talked about of these longer periods of time, it does mean when it’s wet it may be wet longer, and when it’s dry, it may be dry longer than what we’re used to. And how do we deal with now we’re not just talking what we like as in society, we’re talking about growing a crop that feeds the world.
(11:56):
So if we’re going to get periods of time that are much more extensive dry, how are we going to deal with that and vice versa, much more extensive wet? And so that’s why I like to visit about these things and think them through. And so let’s talk a little bit about where we’re at with this drought, and I think people were pretty concerned about it a month ago, and are we still? We’ve had more moisture here in the last 30 days, but how do you feel about that?
Dennis Todey (12:29):
A lot of it depends on location and a lot of it depends on what we’ve seen over the last several years. If you look around the corn belt, if you look at the Eastern Corn Belt, say Illinois to the east, things are in pretty good shape except for far southern Illinois, which is fairly dry. Arcing up around into Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakotas, things are drier, but probably not as major an issue. And then you get down to Iowa parts of Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, we still have some pretty dry issues, and I have to qualify that because you mentioned we’ve had some winter rains and we’ve had some winter snows and some of that moisture has gotten in the soil. So hey, we should be in better shape. And from a soil moisture standpoint, we’re not bad in places, but down deep in the profile, I’m hearing anecdotally, and it makes sense that we still are dry down that profile.
(13:23):
When you start talking groundwater, we have some groundwater deficits because when you look, especially I mentioned that Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas area, if you look back the last two or three years, over the last three years, we’re dealing with over 30 inch precipitation deficits in some places. So to say we’re out of it, we don’t need to make up those 30 inches. We’re not going to make that up. We just write that off at some point. But we know we have dryness down deeper in the profile that when crops get down to that area that there’s not going to be much there available for them, or if people who are relying on wells or some kind of groundwater, we’ve heard anecdotally and in some places, some water systems going, “Hey, we know that we’re kind of getting limited and we’re concerned about this.”
(14:13):
So from an ag standpoint directly, we can still do okay if we get the timing of precipitation right, but we need bigger precipitation amounts overall to be able to overcome this. And on the offside, these drier soils and especially some warmer temperatures coming up, are probably going to allow people to make some early field work, get movement on field work.
Jamie Duininck (14:37):
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I still think the age-old quote of, “It takes a long time to get dry and only one day to get wet,” is a reality, but it is pretty… I don’t think the average… when you just said that, I was quite surprised that we’re talking 30-inch deficits over the last two to three years in certain parts of the Midwest, and that can’t be done in a day or two to get back to average.
Dennis Todey (15:09):
And when we think about it, we really don’t want it to because, okay, let’s get five of rain. How many producers want five inches of rainfall on their soils? No, I don’t. I want five two-inch rainfalls or something like that because the bigger rainfalls, you’re going to lose soil. It’ll produce runoff. So if you’ve got a pond or dug out or something, that helps. But from a soil moisture standpoint, we just can’t get that water in the soil quickly.
Jamie Duininck (15:39):
Right, right. Very interesting. So what about… We talked about the temperature side. Let’s talk a little bit more about the precip side and how you feel about why that happened this past year. Was it the same with El Nino or is there other factors in that?
Dennis Todey (16:01):
Yeah. Well, from the winter standpoint, yes, there are indications with El Nino that there is a more active pattern to some extent from the plains up into parts of the Midwest, and then the Great Lakes tend to be drier. So the Great Lakes were somewhat drier, and that up into Iowa and parts of Minnesota were wetter was not a surprise. When you look at previous El Ninos, there always is an area somewhere in the Midwest that gets a bit wetter. It is not consistent as to where that was. So that was part of it. The longer term issue that we’re looking at is we know that drought occurs in the Midwest for the last 30 or 40 years plus, it’s been kind of one-off, maybe one-off or two-off years. This is a longer dry period, especially in Iowa. Our state climatologist keeps a running count week 196, I think it is on the US Drought Monitor, at least D1 on the US Drought Monitor, which you have to go back to the 50s or 30s to compare overall from that standpoint.
Jamie Duininck (17:11):
Interesting. Interesting. And it doesn’t… Like you say, we’re getting enough moisture to grow a crop. We’ve had pretty good crops throughout that 196 weeks it was right? 196 weeks?
Dennis Todey (17:26):
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Jamie Duininck (17:27):
However, and it also hasn’t really affected our commodity price to keep that up, but commodity prices have continued to drop, so it’ll be really interesting to see what happens now as we go into our growing season. It’s a pretty critical time. What are you thinking about how this plays out over the next 90 days to 180 days?
Dennis Todey (17:53):
Yeah, okay. The things that we know, we talked about this earlier, Eastern Corn Belt soils are in pretty good shape, or actually a little wet in some places right now, so it may be a little bit delayed planting there. Focused on Iowa, we’re really concerned. We’ve had some recent rainfalls, but there’s still some long-term dryness, in the northern area, some dryness, but not too bad. We know that the El Nino is fading, and we’re going through what’s called a rapid transition to a La Nina, the opposite phase. In fact, we may be back in La Nina by late summer. So La Nina in summer usually has a bad connotation. So I don’t want to scare people at this point because there’s still a lot that can happen. But there are a couple things that some recent research has pointed to. One, there have been some bigger drought years that have occurred during these transition seasons, but not always.
(18:52):
And it always struck me as odd as to why that was, but there’s been some recent research, and this research pointed out that there was a consistent signal over these transition seasons in the main part of the Midwest, and that was actually heat, that these summers tended to be warmer, not cooler. There was an inconsistent signal with precipitation. So that’s the thing we’re watching right now is maybe some more heat, and then we’ll have to wait and see what happens with precipitation. So the takeaway from that is if my soil moisture is in pretty good situation, I’m cautiously optimistic that we can get through this. If you have really dry soils right now and there’s potential for heat, then I start being a little concerned. And I think people should be a little bit cautious, a little judicious in what they’re planning for at that point, just to make sure they don’t overcommit or overextend what they think can happen if they have another round of dryness.
(19:47):
Certainly I think people who’ve gone through the last few years, they realize soils are dry and hopefully are going, “Yeah, okay, I’ll watch what I’m doing here because of continued dryness.” So that’s the main thing I’m looking for is maybe some more heat this summer. And then we wait and see what happens in the way of precipitation. Right now we’re seeing there’s more precipitation going to be coming this summer, at least for the spring. The problem is the dry soils we have to overcome. We got a lot of moisture to get back to the soils.
Jamie Duininck (20:18):
So during this time, this 196 weeks of drier than normal, I don’t like to use the word drought, so not in the water management business, but has it been an El Nino the entire time or did we come into that?
Dennis Todey (20:40):
No. Yeah, and we talked about variability earlier. This is another example. The first couple of years, even well into last February, we were in this protracted La Nina. It wasn’t strong all the time, but we were a protracted La Nina. Late last winter, we transitioned to El Nino. We were into El Nino by summertime, and then we were in this strong El Nino summer into winter, and now we’re flipping back the opposite way. And okay, you say, “Well, okay, is that a big deal?” It is, because that’s not something we usually see. Usually there’s a couple years in between where you’re kind of waffling between the two. So we flip back and forth. So again, another example of that variability and something that we do need to keep an eye on to see, because El Nino and La Nina are not everything. They don’t control everything over us. The thing they do is they can give us hints of some things, looking out several months in advance so that we can hedge our bets out a little bit.
Jamie Duininck (21:40):
Yeah. Yeah. I’m glad I asked that question because so cautiously optimistic about the next kind of this growing season, and we’ll see where we go from there. But thanks for joining me today, Dennis, and I’d like to give you a kind of the last word here on the Water Table Podcast on how you feel are… once again just to ground ourselves. We’re talking here in the spring of 24 as people listen to this at different times, but what’s your advice for a farmer or a grower or somebody that’s just interested in what’s going to happen in the upper Midwest with the climate here for the growing season?
Dennis Todey (22:23):
Sure. Well, my joking answer is for everyone, for 50 miles around you, it’s going to be great, for everybody else it’s going to be terrible.
Jamie Duininck (22:30):
Yeah. Well, that’d be perfect, wouldn’t it?
Dennis Todey (22:35):
That’d be great. From a serious standpoint, certainly if you are dry, think hard about what you’re doing and what your yield goals and your marketing aspects. That’s not my expertise, but we know that there are some potential yield shortcomings that could be coming because of the dryness, maybe not bad, but enough. And then the Eastern Corn Belt, we’re not bad starting off because from moisture standpoint. So those are some things to keep an eye on.
Jamie Duininck (23:07):
Yep. Thank you for your time and for joining me here on the Water Table today.
Dennis Todey (23:12):
Take care.