A View From the Field

Apr 19, 2024

By Tom McCall

We’ve had a cold winter across a lot of our state, and I am enjoying spring and all the opportunities the new season brings for family fun and good food. There’s nothing like spending more time outdoors. Especially after we all had to “spring forward” with the time adjustment.

The longer days of spring and planting seed for summer always give me hope and an optimistic spirit that we as farmers need to keep going forward.

Some of my favorite memories from this time of year include our grandkids, Winn, Wilkes and McCall, fishing from the pond on our family’s farm.

Anyone who has heard me speak at a Farm Bureau event most likely has heard me say, “I don’t own that property in the small community of Fortsonia, I’m just borrowing it from my grandkids.”

Like most farmers, I’ve done what I can to protect that farmland for my family and future generations.

As our state’s Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper has said repeatedly, “You may not think about it every day, but agricultural products and the security of our food supply are the most important elements when it comes to our national security.”

Agriculture is Georgia’s number one economic sector and employs over 323,300 Georgians. Across the nation, the direct impact of the food supply chain from farm to retail is about 24 million jobs, according the most recent Feeding the Economy Report. Clearly, what we do as food producers is very important, and everyone depends on us whether they realize it or not.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.