Arizona drought could continue indefinitely – No relief in sight with dry winter forecast

By Catherine Holland; Weather forecast by Meteorologist Royal Norman
26 September 2011 PHOENIX – It’s been a dry summer and it looks like it’s going to be a dry winter. That does not bode well for Arizona’s drought conditions, which have been an issue since 1999. As Javier Soto reports, the return of the La Niña weather pattern could mean even drier conditions next year. According to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, the La Niña weather pattern is “cooler than normal sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific ocean that impact global weather patterns. La Niña conditions recur every few years and can persist for as long as two years.” Why does that matter to us in Arizona? “La Niña often features drier than normal conditions in the Southwest in late summer through the subsequent winter,” according to the NOAA website. This dry forecast comes on top of more than a decade of drought conditions. The latest survey by the Nebraska-based National Drought Mitigation Center shows all of Arizona in some degree of drought. The extremely dry weather has already forced some ranchers to thin their herds because the range conditions are so poor. It also has contributed to this year’s record wildfire season, which stretched into September and left more than 1 million acres charred. In addition to exacerbating drought conditions, this year’s drier-than-normal monsoon, dubbed a “nonsoon,” and a series of intense dust storms combined to created atypical dust conditions that exceeded federal standards 85 times. Local air-quality agencies believe 84 of those incidents can be attributed to weather.

Arizona drought: No relief in sight with dry winter forecast

By Jim Cross, KTAR.com
5 October 2011 PHOENIX – The National Weather Service said Arizona has been under drought conditions since at least 1999 and it could take a series of wet winters to end the drought. Paul Iniguez with the National Weather Service said, “Drought conditions have really gotten worse over the past 12 months after a wet 2009-2010 winter. We’ve had periods of wetness but we keep sliding back into these conditions.” Iniguez said you can never really catch up on being below on rainfall. “If we’re behind 10 inches of rain that doesn’t mean we need 10 inches to bring us to what’s considered normal. If we could get an above average winter that would help but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen because of La Niña which could deliver the second consecutive dry winter.” Iniguez said there have been cases where the typically dry La Niña winter goes against the grain and turns out to be wet. “But the chips are on a dry winter rather than a wet winter this season.” The winter precipitation is what helps out because the storm systems can cover the entire state.

Arizona’s drought could continue indefinitely