State Climatologist makes own weather predictions

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BY ALGIS J. LAUKAITIS / Lincoln Journal Star

All eyes will be on Punxsutawney Phil on Saturday as the famous weather-forecasting groundhog makes his annual prediction with his shadow.

State Climatologist Allen Dutcher — obviously using more scientific methods — made his weather predictions on the last day of  January at a water conference in Holdrege. Here’s what Dutcher told irrigators and dryland farmers:

* The cold pattern will continue. His reply to people who complain that it’s been a very cold winter: “This is what it’s supposed to be like in Nebraska. You only kind of forgot.”

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State Climatologist Allen Dutcher

State Climatologist Allen Dutcher

*  Soils in central and eastern Nebraska are 80 percent saturated, so storage capacity for additional moisture is limited. Expect planting delays this spring and substantial runoff from fields.

* Western Nebraska, especially in the Panhandle region, is exceptionally dry — less than an inch of moisture in the soil — and drought conditions are likely to persist unless the area gets a lot of snow in February. Expect damage to rangeland and the prospect of wildfires this summer.

*  Stream flows in the Republican River in January were in the normal range, the first time that’s happened in years, Dutcher says. Harry Strunk reservoir near Cambridge and Harlan County reservoir, both in southwest Nebraska, look good.

*  Snowpack in the mountains of  Wyoming and Colorado has not been great so far but colder temperatures are holding it in place. That melting snow feeds reservoirs on the North Platte River which flows into drought-stricken Lake McConaughy, the state’s largest irrigation reservoir. The lake is only at 35 percent of its storage capacity. Seminole and Pathfinder reservoirs on the North Platte River in Wyoming are in worse shape. Don’t look for conditions at Lake McConaughy to improve any time soon. 

* Omaha and Lincoln, the state’s two largest cities, and eastern Nebraska won’t see any problems from drought this year — and neither will the Holdrege area.

*  And there’s one more prediction that Punxsutawney Phil didn’t make, but Dutcher did: “It will be a very, very active severe weather season in the Central Plains.”

Reach Algis J. Laukaitis at (402) 473-7243 or alaukaitis@journalstar.com.