Drought Remains the Most “God-Awful Positive Feedback Mechanism”

LUBBOCK, TX – The days of not knowing when drought is coming are over. If you want to be a rancher in a dry country you need to know when those dry times are coming. You can still make money, says Brian Bledsoe, a meteorologist and climatologist in Colorado Springs at the virtual 2021 Southwest Beef Symposium, but need to know that drought is the new normal for the Southern High Plains and Desert Southwest. The annual event, which began in 2004, is organized jointly by New Mexico State University and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. When researching a ranch in Southeast New Mexico, Bledsoe told attendees that he found drought occurred at that point 75 percent of the time over the past 13 years. There are ways to make significant money during dry times but warns that running cattle on dryland is probably not a good way to do it. “Drought begets drought and it is the most god-awful positive feedback mechanism in the atmosphere that there is” he said. “Because the longer the soil stays dry, the more it heats up, the more it heats up, the drier it gets, the warmer and drier it is, the more the atmosphere stirs up, which cranks up the wind, and then you have the wind that further dries it up.” Currently, 92 percent of the West is in drought – including all of West Texas and the entire state of New Mexico – and 93 percent of the High Plains (from Kansas to North Dakota) is dealing with some level of drought. “Where it’s drier than average right now and that drought is severe,” Bledsoe concluded, “chances are it’s going to stay that way”.
(SOURCE: All Ag News)