Stop us if you’ve heard this before: El Nino is on its way. If you’ve been dry for the last few years, there’s moisture on its way to you.

As Canadians shed their coats from a moderate winter season, the results are portending a drier and hotter weather trend going into spring and summer, especially in the western provinces.

Through the first half of 2024, it looked like the U.S. might be climbing out of the drought that has plagued big chunks of the country for the last half-decade. The El Nino the ag world had been waiting for was finally here. And then, it wasn’t.

Just days after fires moved across the Texas Panhandle, the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA) hosted the 2024 Cattle Raisers Convention and Expo on March 22-23 in Fort Worth, Texas.

“Where’s my El Nino?”
That’s the question many farmers and ranchers have been asking over the past year, and the answer is one many might not want to hear: El Nino is here, but it’s already on its way out the door.

The three-year lament appears to be ending as readings in the Pacific Ocean portend warming waters in 2023. El Nino weather patterns, when warming Pacific waters create moisture in much of the West and Midwest states, have been missing since 2019. La Nina, the uglier twin sibling of El Nino, where colder ocean temperatures lead to warmer and less water, has hung around since then worsened the Western drought.