January 17, 2019 Weather Impacts On Economic Activity - Drought To Persist

Written by Sig Silber

U.S. and World Agriculture and More: Plus an Expanded Weather Forecast Section.

The 6 – 14 Day forecast (which NOAA assigns a level of confidence of 5 out of 5) shows a drying out from west to east. Obviously that will not be helpful to water conditions in the West. For the next two weeks, the East will be wet. It appears that after the current and soon to arrive trailing storm enter CONUS, there is a huge High Pressure area forming which will block storms from entering the West Coast. This in the past has been called the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge (RRR). It may only be a two to three week break in the inflow of Pacific storms. But starting soon, the forecast calls for a significant decrease in precipitation for the West and spreading to the East. We may know a bit more when the Week 3 – 4 Forecast is updated on Friday and we will update our commentary at that time.

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