El Niño Arrives ~ and Other News

Dalhart Weather Review
(Mar 10 - Mar 16)
Aaron Graves

UPDATED forecast for March 18-21 ~ We might see our first spring thunderstorm as early as tomorrow, according to the National Weather Service in Amarillo. The forecast calls for a 40% chance of showers tonight and a 50% chance of thunderstorms on Thursday. Rain chances continue through Friday. High temperatures will be in the mid 50's tomorrow and will warm into the mid to upper 60's over the weekend. 

The NWS held storm spotter training at the Dalhart Volunteer Fire Department last Saturday. A standing room only crowd listened intently as Krissy Scotten ran through the basic science of thunderstorms and tornadoes. She also showed how to recognize dangerous weather and how to report it. Those are topics for a future article. What follows are some interesting tidbits picked up during the class.

Sea surface temperature in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
 El Niño is characterized by unusually warm temperatures
in the equatorial Pacific.

El Niño - Congratulations, El Niño has finally arrived. The weather pattern, which is created by a warmer-than-normal Pacific Ocean, generally brings us more rain. It is a weak El Niño but hopefully our snowy winter will continue as a wet spring. The El Niño is expected to continue through the summer months.  


Snow Winner - Dalhart has seen 34.1" of snow since winter began, which is 18.4" above normal. That makes us "the big winner" according to Scotten. Amarillo has seen 23.9" and Borger has seen 17.5" of snow. 

More tornadoes this year? - Basically, that is impossible to say. However, it could be a stormier spring compared to the last few years. Thanks to the drought, tornadoes in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles have been very scarce. There was an uptick last year, with a whopping 12 reported and rated on the EF scale. During an El Niño year, however, the 23 counties in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles average 28 tornadoes. Of course, there are some El Niño years on record that saw almost no toranado activity, and some that saw more. Still, it would be a good idea to review your tornado safety procedures. 

This graphic shows the probability of any type of
severe weather across the U.S. during the week of
June 3, based on records from 1982 thru 2011. The
severe weather season for Dalhart typically peaks
the first half of June.

Keep and eye on June - Scotten presented a series of slides that showed how the stormy season progresses from the east to the west and north over the spring and summer months. In short, severe weather (damaging hail, wind and tornadoes) is more common to our east until the mid May and peaks the first half of June. You can see the slides at the Storm Prediction Center website here:

You can survive a tornado - Scotten said that the survival rate in a well built home that is hit by a tornado is 99%. This is a message the NWS has been promoting since an Oklahoma TV meteorologist encouraged residents to get in their cars and flee the Oklahoma City area ahead of a massive tornado. It resulted in an unbelievable traffic jam that could have cost lives had the tornado stayed on the ground. That same tornado did kill three veteran storm chasers after impacting their car. 

Prepare now for severe weather - Now is the time to decide what you are going to do when severe weather strikes. We will look closer at severe weather safety in next week's article. In short, know where you will go and what you will do before the storms arrive. You can go ahead and read about it at this link here:

High and low temps the past week: 

Mar 10: 69, 33
Mar 11: 72, 35
Mar 12: 73, 31
Mar 13: 72, 35
Mar 14: 64, 37
Mar 15: 72, 24
Mar 16: 84, 33