By Jim Noel
La Nina remains in full swing, the cooling of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Typically the impacts kick in for Ohio by late December or January. You can see the typical wet signal for the Ohio Valley and Ohio in the attached La Nina graphic courtesy of NOAA.
You can keep up on La Nina and ENSO at the links below:
Therefore, the climate pattern supports big swings for temperatures for the rest of winter through early spring with the tendency toward above normal temperatures. This will also support snow that comes and goes for most of Ohio. This can expose winter wheat to temperature changes with limited snowpack.
As for rainfall and precipitation, expect above normal conditions to ramp back up for later January into February and March. Northwest Ohio subsoils remain drier than normal but the expectation is for wetting up to continue late winter into early spring.
Going forward through spring, the wetter conditions typically shutdown at some point and that varies for each La Nina event but often it is by May or June.
We will have to watch an expansive drought area in parts of the central and western U.S. to see if that shifts east for summer. That can happen during La Nina events where we go from wet in winter and spring to dry in summer.
For winter into spring expect wetter in the eastern corn and soybean area while drier in western areas. By late spring and summer that dryness can shift east.
Finally, attached is an image of the last 30-years of rainfall trends for spring provided by NOAA. You will see the wetting up in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes including Ohio.
Source : osu.edu