Contact: Blair Fannin, 979-845-2259, b-fannin@tamu.edu, Twitter: @cowhand
To look ahead to the future, you need to look back at the past. That’s what one weather expert does in forecasting Texas weather for ranchers across the Lone Star State.
At this year’s Texas A&M Beef Cattle Short Course, Brian Bledsoe, Southern Livestock Standard weatherman, discussed his use of a variety of models and historical data to derive future weather patterns.
His use of several weather indexes assists his analysis of past and current patterns to formulate what might happen in the future. Bledsoe, no doubt, had the 1,400 beef short course participants’ attention with his informative presentation.
Looking back at Texas weather since the 1950s, he said he sees a lot of model data that “agrees on the same thing.” When attempting to match this past year’s weather with current weather patterns and move forward, he said it’s tough to get an identical match but there are several indicators “that we are reliving the 1950s.”
He said future weather patterns suggest we are headed to those patterns seen in the 1960s and 1970s, which he discusses in detail for subscribers of the Southern Livestock Standard.
Some of the tools he uses is the Madden-Julian Oscillation Indices(http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_mjo_index/mjo_index.html) and the North Atlantic Oscillation http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/teledoc/nao.shtml .
There’s optimism for Texas ranchers and future weather patterns, Bledsoe said. One of the keys is to keep an eye on the Atlantic, which according to Bledsoe, “seems to breed drought for Texas.” (See http://today.agrilife.org/2012/08/07/texas-am-beef-short-course-producers-hear-optimistic-outlook-on-weather-patterns/)
From what he’s seen through several of the indexes and models, the current heat wave gripping the Midwest, Oklahoma and Colorado will soon be coming to a close. In fact, the 10-year outlook rivals a pattern established in the late 1950s, which if history is correct, Texas can look forward to some much-needed moisture.