El Niño Flips Switch for Cotton Belt Forecast
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.
And on the docket for today: elephant. Brad Rippey is an agricultural meteorologist with the US Department of Agriculture and, in giving the forecast for the US Cotton Belt, he went straight to the jungle animal…
“Well the elephant in the room and maybe I should clarify that and say the kinder, gentler elephant in the room is El Nino.”
He says we're coming off of a protracted period of enhanced drought coverage not just in the Cotton Belt but across the country as a whole with an El Nino that's been in place since late spring early summer 23…
“That that development of El Nino which came early in the year, kind of atypically early, may have contributed to that heat and the drought in the Cotton Belt in 2023. But now that we've flipped the switch into the cold season there are much more encouraging signs because one of the hallmarks of El Nino which is a warming of the oceanic waters in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific is to supercharge or turbocharge the subtropical jet stream that oftentimes will lead to wetter conditions across the southern tier of the United States.”
He calls it good news as we're coming off of another tough year for cotton. Again Brad Rippey, agricultural meteorologist with the US Department of Agriculture.
