Earth & Sky

Will 2006 be a wet or dry year?

JB: This is Earth & Sky. As 2006 began, a severe drought was causing wildfires over a half million acres of land in Texas and Oklahoma

DB: But while the National Weather Service called the drought in the U.S. southern plains “severe” to “exceptional,” they also acknowledged that, overall, 2005 was a wet year for much of the U.S.

Douglas LeComte: Looking at the latest maps that show which states were wet and which were dry during 2005, there were more states that were unusually wet than were unusually dry.

JB: That’s Douglas LeComte, drought specialist at the national Climate Prediction Center. He said a La Niña – or cooler-than-normal temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean – could make 2006 much drier overall than last year.

Douglas LeComte: And La Niñas do tend to be associated with more dry conditions than wet conditions across the U.S. So we’ll be watching very carefully what happens across the tropical Pacific Ocean to see if that pattern continues.

DB: So the droughts could continue in some parts of the U.S.

LeComte: There are always these striking exceptions. There will always be floods in one part of the country and droughts in the other. But when you look out at a long range forecast, it’s certainly the southwest, and possibly even the southeast could start turning dry.

JB: That’s our show. Thanks today to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.