Connecting Ag to Climate: Monthly webinar recaps current conditions and shares weather outlooks
By: Averi Reynolds
Do you often wonder about conditions across Wyoming? Are you curious how current temperatures, precipitation, stream flow or snowpack compare to historical averages and influence the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM)? Would near-term forecasts outlining potential weather be helpful to your operation?
The Wyoming Conditions and Outlooks Webinar, hosted by the Wyoming Conditions Monitoring Team (WCMT), has just what you are looking for.
Originally convened in response to an emerging drought in June of 2020, the WCMT is made up of local, state, federal, Tribal and university partners collaborating to submit recommendations to the USDM for Wyoming.
In addition to keeping an eye on conditions throughout the state, the WCMT ensures impacts to agriculture, ecosystems, hazard planning and preparedness, public health, recreation and tourism, municipalities and water utilities and wildlife management are accurately captured and communicated to appropriate outlets.
Conditions reporting
Monthly webinars are intended to be a resource for service providers and agricultural producers to inform and reflect upon management decisions. Current condition reports, including drought, temperature, precipitation, soil moisture and stream flows, provide information for those looking at specific areas of the state.
However, a whole-state overview lends itself to an understanding of what is happening across the state and how it might impact the industry.
Near-term outlooks, which include – but are not limited to – temperature, precipitation, wildland fire potential and global climate systems, help provide information about decisions producers and land managers may be making in coming weeks and months.
In addition, the webinar often highlights typical weather hazards by season.
For example, the Sept. 19 webinar shared, coming into October, Wyomingites can expect the chances of fire weather, flooding and severe thunderstorms to dwindle and chances of experiencing high winds and winter storms to increase.
The monthly webinars also feature an invited speaker to cover additional, timely information for attendees.
Recent features include water supply forecasting methods presented in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Natural Resources Conservation Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service Missouri River Forecasting Center, harmful cyanobacterial blooms by the Wyoming Department of Health and a fire briefing by the Great Basin Fire Coordination Center.
Input helps to serve you
As the webinars exist to connect resources to boots on the ground, the WCMT greatly values feedback into how the team can make webinars as beneficial and helpful as possible. If producers have interest in certain kinds of data which aren’t currently presented or if the team could present information differently to make it more applicable to operations, they encourage everyone to reach out.
The next webinar will take place at 1 p.m. on Oct. 17. To register, visit bit.ly/4eNgFAM or e-mail Windy Kelley at wkelley1@uwyo.edu.
Learn more about the monthly Wyoming Conditions and Outlooks webinars and other resources available from the WCMT at drought.wyo.gov.
Recordings of webinars, as well as a PDF of the webinar are available on the website.
Averi Reynolds is an ORISE science communications fellow for the USDA Northern Plains Climate Hub, serving Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. The USDA Northern Plains Climate Hub strives to provide unbiased information about adaptation and mitigation strategies for ranchers, farmers and foresters to help increase their operations’ resilience to weather variability and a changing climate. For more information on the Northern Plains Climate Hub, visit climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/northern-plains.
