Opinion: Better production practices help farmers survive drought

Nov 15, 2022

At the heart of John Palliser’s triangle is the steppe that runs west in Saskatchewan from the Montana border to Lethbridge. It can be dry country.

In the 1860s, when the explorer came through that part of the Northwest Territory, he saw little potential for farming, preferring the area we now call the dark brown, black and gray soil zones of the Prairies. The area in the lighter brown zone would only be fit for livestock, Palliser surmised.

But 160 years later, crops are doing, at least economically, better than cattle in that zone. Palliser couldn’t have foreseen all the technology farmers use today to get those crops or the risk management tools used to keep producers on the land through the worst years.

It’s not that the heart of the triangle hasn’t seen drought before. It was a little droughty after the First World War, similar to parts of the 1930s. After the Great Depression, when people in the region talked about the bad drought of that period, they mostly referred to 1936, a year that was less than one-third as dry as 2022. Dry conditions combined with heavy tillage at that time left farmers struggling to grow anything.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.