Written by Sig Silber
We have a NASS Executive Briefing on hogs and pigs which is located in the Agriculture Section of this article. It looks like those raising hogs or the major feed, corn, have both benefited from recent increases in prices. We have expanded our reporting on energy and we are surprised by some of the data. We feature the state rankings over the last 126 years with respect to temperature and precipitation for the three-month period of September through November. There is a lot more in our report this week. And of course, this article contains the intermediate-term weather forecast.
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Last week we looked at the state rankings for temperature and precipitation for November. Now we look at the three-month period of September – November
Two states set records for record temperatures and there are a lot of states much above average. But there were also a lot of states with about average temperature.
For maximum temperatures, it is a bit less extreme.
For minimum temperatures, it is even less extreme. Only one state set a record. One state was below average. It is still about how warm the minimum temperature was not how cold it was.
Two states were record dry. There was both a larger number of states that were much below average and many that were much above average. That was probably due to tropical activity.
Sometimes it is useful to look at the climate divisions within states.
You can really see where it was record dry when you break a state down to its climate divisions.
Severe Weather
Let’s look at the current drought situation.
And the week to week change
And the three-month change
Here we look at four-time periods: one week, one month, six months, and a full year. (It will not have been updated when published but we will update it after NRCS publishes it. We could create it ourselves now but I prefer to let someone else do it and we have shown the one week and three months above.)
You kind of have to look at this 4-Plex in reverse. The lower right graphic shows the situation today as compared to a year ago. This set of graphics shows that this drought has materialized over the past six months.
December Drought Outlook
The forecast is for dry. But not all La Nina’s are dry. There is a lot of variation.
I created this one myself. I think it is the situation as of the end of day December 23, 2020. Sorry I did not get the color code in the image. Red is not good. Green is good. White is neutral. These are the percent of normal. There are not many greens and most are in the Northwest but some are on the edge of the Great Plains.
This is a big improvement over last week.
Recent weather has made the east coast quite wet.
If it gets cold, there is not much snow cover for winter wheat. There is not much snow to interfere with harvesting.
Intermediate-Term Weather Forecast
Showing from left to right, Days 1- 5, 6 – 10, 8 – 14, and Weeks 3 – 4 You can click on these maps to have them enlarge. Also, the discussions that go with these forecast maps can be found here (first two weeks) and here (Weeks 3 and 4).
First Temperature
And then Precipitation
It doesn’t look like the weather will interfere with harvesting. It does not look too bad for winter wheat. Although people are talking up oil and gas prices, it does not look like the weather will be favorable for that as the overall forecast is warmer than usual.
The Week 3-4 Discussion is always interesting.
La Nina conditions currently are present across the Pacific Ocean. Equatorial sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are below average from the west-central to eastern Pacific Ocean with enhanced trade winds and westerly wind anomalies aloft. The RMM-based Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) index indicates a weakening of the MJO since mid-December. Both the ECMWF and GEFS favor little to no MJO activity during Week-1, but suggest potential renewed MJO activity over the Indian Ocean during Week-2. The Week 3-4 temperature and precipitation outlooks are based primarily on dynamical model forecasts from the NCEP CFS, ECMWF, and JMA, and the Subseasonal Experiment (SubX) multi-model ensemble (MME) of experimental and operational ensemble prediction systems with additional considerations for La Nina and long-term trends, as well as the predicted evolution of the pattern from Week-2 forecasts.
Dynamical model 500hPa height anomaly forecasts during week 3-4 show a fairly consistent evolution from the forecast state during Week-2. CFS and ECMWF Models feature anomalous troughing with near to below normal 500-hPa heights over the North Pacific, the Bering Sea, southwestern mainland Alaska and the Aleutians, while ridging with above normal 500-hPa heights are forecast over the southwestern CONUS. Near to below normal heights are forecast across much of the eastern CONUS, with the exception of parts of the northeastern CONUS, where above normal heights are forecast. A large positive 500-hPa anomaly is forecast over the Davis Strait. All models appear consistent in predicting above normal 500-hPa heights over Hawaii.
The Week 3-4 temperature outlook features enhanced chances of above-normal temperatures across much of CONUS, except for Florida Panhandle, where below normal temperatures are forecast. The greatest confidence for above-normal temperatures are expected over the most of western and northeastern CONUS, favoring a 60-70% chance of above normal temperature, aligned with predicted above-normal 500-hPa heights throughout much of the period. Anomalous southerly flow and above normal 500-hPa heights lead to enhanced probabilities for above normal temperatures over eastern Mainland Alaska and the Alaska Panhandle
The dynamical model guidance is in reasonably good agreement on the spatial pattern of anomalous precipitation during the Week 3-4 period. Below normal precipitation is favored throughout the southern tier of the US, as is a typical pattern commonly observed during La Nina winters and consistently predicted in dynamical and statistical guidance. Above normal precipitation is more likely over the Pacific Northwest, the Northern Great Basin and the Northern Rockies, and parts of the northeastern
CONUS, while below normal precipitation is slightly favored over portions of the Northern and Central Plains as well as the Upper and Middle Mississippi Valley, supported by the CFS/ECMWF/JMA Correlation and Equal Weighted tools as well as the Autoblend tool.
The week 3-4 outlook favors above normal temperatures for the Hawaiian Islands due to positive SST anomalies in the vicinity. A consensus of the SubX dynamical models predicts likely below normal precipitation for the Hawaiian islands.
Agriculture Situation
Executive Briefing Hogs and Pigs.
This describes the survey
Looks like there were four surveys and this shows the change from one survey to the next.
Our Hog and Pig inventory was slightly less as of December 1, 2020 as compared to December 1, 2019. Iowa seems to have had the major decrease.
This shows the change by state from last year. There may be a correlation with the drought.
This shows the change in distribution by size. My guess was some were waiting for higher prices and were willing to absorb the higher feed costs.
I think they are talking about the intention to breed. There had been an upward trend but it kind of peaked and flattened out.
The pigs per litter curve has flattened out also. Hmm. Maybe it is time for some basic anatomy. I will let the reader Google this.
There is a similar chart for crops but these folks do it differently. They have a reason to as they are tracking six groups of animals but they are still showing the NASS estimate versus the range of industry estimates.
A clever way to show the first estimate by NASS and the final estimate by NASS and the range of industry estimates.
They keep pretty close tabs on their breeding herd. Do not read this if it might be upsetting. Looks like a sow gets to breed for six or seven years and then off to the slaughterhouse. I gather that each sow breeds every other year if I am interpreting this and an earlier slide correctly.
If you are from Canada it is easy to come into the U.S. but it may be a short vacation.
This is my favorite slide in the series. Is it better to raise corn or swine? The ratio of hog prices to corn prices should provide the answer. Looks like it has been a roller coaster for those raising hogs this year due to the difficulty to predict the export market.
There are more reports to come. Some of which we will cover. Later in this article, we show our major sources and links are provided both for Executive Briefings and the run of the mill NASS Report.
This looks interesting. With Zoom or equivalent meetings, there are no snacks provided. This is an image so you can not click on where it says Register today. I suspect the URL shown near the top of the page would work and if not the next slide has a phone number you can call. I attended one on water last week. Actually, I was one of the speakers…there were a bunch of us all given three minutes and it was very interesting.
Here is where you can get these reports and also ask questions.
Turning to Energy: A lot of his data comes from the EIA Monthly Energy Review. It is a difficult document to work with as they have long data series that can be very useful but not easily turned into graphics that I can display. But I have provided the link to the full report. I did manage to find a few useful graphics.
It is useful to look at the price trends. I guess this includes a forecast.
There was a decline in consumption in April but it looks like there has not been much impact from the Pandemic. Residential use is seasonal. Notice they are a couple of months behind in being able to make these estimates.
Here you have the long term and the short term shown on the same graph. You can see the rise in the long-term due to fracking and horizontal drilling. 2020 production has dropped down towards 2018 BIG DEAL!. The decline in products supplied is somewhat larger.
Owning drilling rigs might not be the best business to be in. The number in service dropped a lot early this year but is creeping up. So much for producer discipline. They have the discipline of kids in Kindergarten.
Here is the definition of an active service rig. “The number of rigs doing true workovers (where tubing is pulled from the well), or doing rod string and pump repair operations, and that are, on average, crewed and working every day of the month.” So I do not know what is going on here. Where these wells reworked or shut off. I will have to look for some reports that have words in them.
Maybe I will add some more. They are difficult to extract from what EIA publishes.
Here is one that provides some definitions and some other information
Baker Hughes is the go-to place for rig counts but those are not official. I had never heard of Weatherford International Ltd before. They took a beating like the other oilfield services companies. More to check out.
International
This week we do have a map.
It is a mixed picture this week. Northern Brazil and Eastern Europe would have liked more rain and the Philippines less.
Major Sources of Information
In the box are shown the major resources we use. We will not be using them all each week but the reader is welcome to refer to these resources.
Major Sources of Information Used in this Weekly Report - The U.S. Drought Monitor (the full report can be accessed here)
- Selected graphics from our other Weather and Climate Reports are repeated in this report. These reports can be accessed by referencing the Directory here
- Selections from the Tuesday USD Weather and Crop Bulletin (the full report can be accessed here). Selections from the USDA Office of the Chief Economist can be found here. NASS Executive Briefings can be found here. A wide range of NASS Reports can be found here. USDA Foreign Agriculture Service Briefs can be found here and here. Other useful sources of information that I regularly utilize are the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) which can be accessed here and the USDA NRCS Weekly and Weather Climate Update which can be accessed here. A glossary of terms can be found here.
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