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Texas Drought Ends

published: February 20th 2010
source: MySA.com

The drought that blistered Texas for the last two years has ended, thanks to El Niño rain patterns, the National Weather Service says.

The state had been enduring some of the nation's most severe drought conditions until rains started falling about six months ago. The new federal drought map and Texas climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon both agree the state is finally done with drought conditions.

Now there are only a few counties considered abnormally dry, but not drought-stricken. This time last year, more than 60 percent of the state was suffering drought conditions.

El Niño is a weather system that is linked to periodic warming in the tropical Pacific Ocean along with winds and air pressure changes that can affect weather around the world.

Rainfall from the weather system has been credited for increasing “soil moisture, reservoir storage and river flows,” for many river basins across the state. Long-term forecasts point to more rain activity  in the future, with a higher chance of above-normal movement in the next 90 days.

Patrick McDonald, spokesman for the National Weather Service in New Braunfels, said that though the drought is over, that's not the case for many state waterways.

“Agriculturally, the drought is over for farmers and ranchers,” McDonald said. “But for people who want to use rivers and lakes for fishing, tubing and recreational purposes, we could use more water.”

McDonald said eight Texas counties still were deemed extremely dry. Nationally, Michigan and several Western states still are under some drought conditions, but only Hawaii has areas of extreme drought.

McDonald said that in September, temperatures didn't rise above 100 degrees in San Antonio, and the month brought above-normal rainfall. In October, 11.9 inches of rain was reported and November recorded 2 inches, a half-inch below normal.

The rain in December was normal at 1.9 inches, but the average temperature was 5 degrees below normal.

January bright 4.5 inches of rain, which again was above normal for the month. Likewise, the El Niño pattern already as dropped 4 inches of rain on San Antonio this month.

Travis Miller, a professor and leader of the Extension Program at Texas A&M University, said there's hardly any sector of agriculture that doesn't benefit by the ending of the drought as reported by MYSA.com,

“All of our plants grow better and the animals have more to eat,” Miller said. “The issue at hand is the parts of the state that had more than above-average rainfall.”

Miller said the Central to North Texas blacklands, stretching from Austin to Paris and west to Gainesville, typically plant 750,000 to 1 million acres of wheat and only half the crop was planted because of wet conditions in the fall.

He said most of the fields east of Interstate 35 were too wet to cultivate and haven't seen a tractor or field work since early October.

Miller said corn is one of the spring crops that farmers like to plant early due to its sensitivity to high temperatures.

“We're going to see nice pastures, early growth depending on temperature and hopefully see some nice wildflowers,” Miller said. “So a lot of farmers are champing at the bit. It's been a real challenge. They have everything ready to plant and get into the fields.”