The latest outlooks for temperature and precipitation were released from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble this week.  The Outlooks include the monthly forecast for August as well as the seasonal forecast for Aug-Sep-Oct.

This month we also have included an evaporative demand forecast that is being produced by NOAA’s Physical Sciences Center.  The forecast is part of a relatively new drought index called the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI-pronounced Eddie).  The EDDI assesses how much pressure the atmosphere is applying to moisture and thus moving it out of plants and the soil.

More recently EDDI was expanded to include a forecast.  The reason this is interesting is that EDDI is good at tracking drought but does not directly measure precipitation.  It only measures temperature, solar intensity, humidity, and wind speed.  As most people know, forecasting precipitation, especially in the summer, is extremely difficult.  Forecasting the components of EDDI, though, is something we are actually relatively good at and in a way gets around relying on a precipitation forecast. We have included below the EDDI forecast starting in July and going all the way into December.  Probably not a good idea to look too carefully at what could happen in December, but the next three months is fair game and not a stretch for the CFS forecast model EDDI is using. 

It surprised us somewhat they are not expecting to not see much drying outside of July.  When compared below to the NMME model output for August and the Aug-Sep-Oct, we see this is somewhat supported by the multi model ensemble from the NMME.

The latest outlooks for temperature and precipitation were released from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble this week.  The Outlooks include the monthly forecast for July as well as the seasonal forecast for Jul-Aug-Sep.

The monthly outlook maps are below.  For temperature, a warmer than normal July is expected for a large part of the country.  The odds are particularly good (70% or above) for parts of the Southwest.

July precipitation, as usual, is less certain, although, we see some enhanced odds of high than normal July precipitation in the Southern Plains, along the Gulf Coast, and parts of the East Coast.

The path of Cristobal produced a number of impacts across the Gulf and middle of the country including the Corn Belt.  As Cristobal departs for areas north of the Border, we see that the storm produced some very heavy bands of rain up into Wisconsin.

The 2020 Summer Temperature Outlook (Jun-Jul-Aug) is indicating fairly high probabilities of above-normal temperatures for a large part of the U.S.  Parts of the West, states along the Gulf Coast, and the East Coast have a 60-70% chance of seeing hotter than normal temperatures this summer. The largest probabilities (above 70 percent) are centered over the Four Corners region due to forecast models picking up on a reduced precipitation trend in the area and declining soil moisture conditions. Equal Chances of below-, near-, or above-normal temperatures are forecast from the upper to middle Mississippi Valley along with parts of the northern to central Great Plains.

Given what’s going on with the cattle market and smaller numbers of cattle being placed into feedlots we wanted to also take a slightly different look at beef cows and drought this week.  We usually show the US Drought Monitor, which is a compilation of multiple drought indicators, but given the potential for cattle spending a longer period of time on pasture this year we wanted to focus more on precipitation deficits, and so have used data from the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). 

SPI data are used in the Drought Monitor but so are other indicators which might not correlate as well with grass production.  Based on 2019 survey data from NASS, we estimate there are approximately 18% of beef cows are in at least Moderate Drought.  We do expect areas along the Texas Gulf Coast and into Louisiana to improve, however, parts of the Intermountain West and the West/Pacific Northwest could be headed for a long summer with somewhat limited grass production.