Summer Drought Won’t Necessarily Carry into Fall and Winter

Southern Wisconsin has seen some much needed rain in recent days. Even with the rainfall, the state is still officially in a drought. It’s unclear how long the dryer- than-normal conditions will last but climate experts say it is not necessarily a preview of what’s to come in the fall and winter. Jon Martin chairs the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UW-Madison, “There is not much of a statistical correlation at all between what happens in a dry summer and what that means for precipitation or temperature anomalies for the coming fall and winter,” he says.

Martin says he suspects the fall will be dryer than normal because of cooling ocean temperatures in the equatorial pacific which affects weather patterns here in Wisconsin.

Martin was a guest on WPR’s Larry Meiller Show.