ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Monday, February 27, 2006 6:00 pm
In the first six years of the millennium, Lincoln has hit its average precipitation level only once for the period from May 1 through Sept. 30. So far, 2006 weather patterns seem poised to dole out more summer drought punishment to long-suffering residents in the state’s southeast corner.
“The east is a lot drier than the west for the first time I can recall in many, many years,” State Climatologist Al Dutcher told members of the state’s Climate Assessment Response Committee in Lincoln on Monday.
State, federal and University of Nebraska-based officials monitoring weather patterns met for the first time this year. Gov. Dave Heineman lent a rare gubernatorial presence to annual attempts to come to grips with recent weather history and to a less than stellar forecast.
Heineman left without comment after listening to Dutcher for about 45 minutes. But he reacted later Monday as the sun shown on a snowless expanse, temperatures flirted with 70 degrees and farmers across the state tinkered with their corn planters.
“The biggest concern I have,” the governor said, “is, if the drought continues, does that mean that we’re just unlucky that the drought is going on much longer than we think it should? Or is it permanent climate change and what would that mean for agriculture in our state?”
Heineman acknowledged some good news in briefings by Dutcher and other climate specialists. It included much better precipitation results at McCook and points farther west and a gain of 5 feet in Lake McConaughy’s water level over February of last year.
But the recent moisture results have been disappointing in the Republican River Valley, where the state and irrigators are negotiating the unprecedented release of water from the Harlan County Reservoir to fend off a Kansas lawsuit.
It’s “very dry” in Adams and Webster counties, said Merlin Fricke, Hastings-area farmer and committee member.
The same goes for an area reaching southward from Omaha to Nebraska City and then curling back into Gage County. The 3.4 inches of precipitation at Eppley Airfield in Omaha since Oct. 1 add up to the eighth-driest results for that period in the last 50 years.
Lincoln had 6.3 inches over that same stretch.
“We need help from Mother Nature in the long run,” the governor said.
Unfortunately, optimism about what might happen in the Lincoln-Omaha area didn’t transfer to the maps and charts beamed onto a wall of the State Office Building during a series of presentations.
As of mid-February, “we’re right on the northern edge of a below-normal forecast,” Dutcher said.
Those worrying about worsening drought now have their eyes on its northward spread from Texas and shortfalls of rainfall backing into Nebraska from Iowa.
Mark Svoboda, a climatologist at the UNL-based National Drought Mitigation Center, said the latest trend is especially threatening to farmers in southeastern counties who don’t have access to irrigation.
“For them, they’re even more dependent on what comes out of the sky,” Svoboda said.
In much of the state’s southeast corner, the moisture deficit approaches 70-80 percent for the period since Sept. 1.
“We’ve got a lot of areas that are 3, 4, 5 inches down in eastern Nebraska,” he said.
Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.