Ep. 620 - Two Meteorologists and a Duck Scientist Walk into a Studio…

Duck hunters are obsessive weather watchers, as it influences everything from large-scale migration to local movements and habitat use. In this episode, Dr. Mike Brasher welcomes Skot Covert, chief meteorologist at CBS 5News Fort Smith-Fayetteville, AR, and Chance Gotsch, meteorologist at ABC17 Columbia, MO, to discuss early season forecasts for the upcoming fall and winter. Recorded on September 16, 2024, Skot and Chance provide an education on La Nina, El Nino, and how they influence the weather we experience. Although the outlook isn’t great for southern hunters, wild cards in play, so tune in for the details.

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Host

Mike Brasher

DUPodcast Science Host

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Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.

Mike Brasher: Hey everyone, welcome back. I am your host on today's episode, Dr. Mike Brasher, and this is indeed a, it's a first of its kind that we've done here with our video podcast. We are going to be, and I'm actually really excited about it because we're getting into the hunting season, and as excited as we are about the prospects for ducks coming south through various migration events this year, we know that the timing and intensity of those kind of migration events are closely tied to weather and how weather patterns unfold really throughout the fall and winter. And so a lot of waterfowl hunters are are tuned in closely with the weather about this time of year and then all the way through the end of January for most of us. So, we have joining us today two professional meteorologists, and this is something that we're going to be experimenting with here over the coming months, having them back to help talk about significant weather events as they unfold and what it means for you as hunters out in the field. Let me start by welcoming in Chance Gotch, a weekday meteorologist with ABC-17, KMIZ in Columbia, Missouri. Chance, welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast.

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, super excited to be here. I've been a longtime listener, and so it's cool to have the opportunity and excited to talk about pretty much two of my favorite passions, and I'm sure Scott's on the same track here, weather and also duck hunting.

Mike Brasher: Very good. And so Scott Covert is our other guest. He is chief meteorologist for CBS 5 News, KFSM, Fort Smith Fayetteville, Arkansas. Scott, same to you. Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast.

Skot Covert: Thanks. Just by chance, I listen to every episode, highlight of my week, and talking about two of my favorite topics, weather and waterfowl.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, so you guys have already alluded to the fact that you are waterfowl hunters. That's one of the things that makes this conversation a little bit more unique, I think, than what we may have just randomly had if we reached out to some meteorologists. You guys are hunters. You understand and you're a professionally trained meteorologist, so your experiences in the field, the years that you've spent hunting, give you that personal connection with the resource. And then, of course, your profession allows you to to think about how weather at a pretty detailed and technical level may play into what you're experiencing or likely to experience over the fall and winter or on any given day. So I want to start out by giving each of you an opportunity to talk about sort of as a duck hunter, like what's your favorite weather to hunt in? And Chance, I'll start with you.

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, I think mine, I'm not too big of a fan of ice. I like hunting it here in Missouri. A lot of times hunting flooded corn, but I'd probably say just above freezing and a light snow just because it really gets them stirred up from the refuge and gets them going. But that's probably my favorite, right? A lot of people here love the ice. I get it, but I don't like dealing with it too much and moving out of the decoy spread.

Skot Covert: And Scott, what about you? I would have to say the thaw. You know, we had the big freeze last year, and as painful as that was for several days, things were just locked up. I think we were all looking forward to that thaw, and for me, it panned out really nicely. And so I'm not looking forward to things getting locked up this year. If it happens, we'll talk about that today, of course, but if it does, the thaw is always fun.

Mike Brasher: One of the things that our viewers are going to see here if they're watching this online on our YouTube channel is that we'll be showing some graphics, and some of these graphics reflect the results of various climate model runs. And those things, I follow enough meteorologists on X now that I know that you These models run 7, 14, maybe even more than that, days in advance. And the farther out you get, obviously, the less certainty you have in what those projections are actually going to materialize. But you two, being waterfowl hunters and having access and it actually being your job to look out 14, 21, however many days, you have to… I mean, you have some inside information that the rest of us don't. How in tune or how much more excited does that make this time of year for you? Scott, I'll go with you first.

Skot Covert: Well, it kind of just depends on the outlook, right? True. And let's let the cat out of the bag. La Nina, for those of us here in Arkansas, maybe not the best setup. So I don't know if that necessarily gets me excited, but it does excite me to know that we can look further out and beyond that seven-day forecast. I know a lot of hunters this time of year are tuning in for that seven-day forecast, but to be able to go a little bit further, maybe plan some vacation days, that does personally give me a bit of a benefit.

Chance Gotsch: chance? Yeah, kind of what Scott was saying. It's nice to have that general, hey, there could be this happening. You know, a lot of times we're putting out there what is more of a realistic scenario, but sometimes we could see some things that are a little bit more alarming, a little bit quicker that we're not necessarily saying just yet because of the uncertainty. So it's kind of like Scott said, something where you could plan out maybe a little bit further for those vacation days before, you know, you can really start to lock in uncertainty, maybe big fronts that could be pushing ducks through.

Skot Covert: On the contrary, and I know Chance will agree with this, we don't necessarily have the luxury of always taking off when these fronts come through because if there's bad weather, we got to work. And so sometimes it can be a double-edged sword.

Mike Brasher: Yeah, I guess so. And so the viewers today and listeners will hear some of that and hear some of these longer-range projections. And yeah, we can begin to think about how it may influence what we experience this year. And I think probably what we're going to learn is that, Boy, if we have an opportunity to get in on a potentially good hunt this year due to some short-term weather event, we should pretty well take advantage of that this year more than a lot of others if these projections hold true. So, Scott, you did kind of touch on what it is we're going to be talking about, and that is La Nina, or the larger El Nino, La Nina kind of weather or climate patterns. Last year, many of our listeners will remember that we talked about a fairly strong El Nino that we were experiencing and had some very, very profound effects on us. So this year, it's a little bit different, and so we're going to be talking about that. uh, the, where we are relative to this El Niño La Niña cycle. And we'll get to that in just a minute. What I want to do right now is have a little bit of fun and say that, you know, there's a lot of our listeners that, that are probably of the age that when we hear someone talking about El Niño or La Niña, uh, at least part of your brain goes back to this now famous clip from a Saturday Night Live skit in 1997. Play that for us, Chris. So that, of course, was the late, great Chris Farley, rest his soul. He was a tremendous comedian. I loved watching him on Saturday Night Live, and that, of course, was always one of my favorites. So the other thing that we chatted about before we started recording here was just one of the things that he mentioned. Of course, his character in that skit struggled to know exactly what the proper translation of El Niño was and we were talking about that and you know the three of us had we were vaguely familiar with the Spanish translation what I think we are familiar with the Spanish translation of El Niño and La Niña you know the little boy and little girl But more technically, this El Nino, when you go into a NOAA site and it says that El Nino reference originated by fishermen off the coast of South America as there was this recurring appearance of unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean. It typically arrived around Christmastime, around the first of the year. And so, el niño technically means in Spanish, the little boy or the Christ child, and it was that Christ child sort of reference associated with Christmas that began, that I think led them to call it that. Now, y'all were telling me with respect to la niña, it means the little girl, but it was not originally part of this larger climate pattern that we're going to talk about.

Skot Covert: Yeah, that was really discovered in the, basically the 80s is when that became widely accepted in the scientific community. So, you'll probably hear Chance talk about ENSO, El Niño-Southern Oscillation. It's not because La Niña is not included, it's just that term came to be long before we discovered La Niña.

Mike Brasher: And so let's go there right now. We have a few graphics here, and Chance, I'm going to turn it over to you to kind of walk us through this. What is El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the El Niño-La Niña climate pattern? Give us sort of a, I have to say, 101 education on this phenomenon, and so you can just prompt us whenever you want that graphic, Chance.

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, so basically the El Nino Southern Oscillation, like Scott was saying, is basically the temperatures of the sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, so off the southwest coast. So basically there's a lot of buoy monitors out there that will determine what the actual temperatures are, and it's a change in the actual temperatures, a shift of about half of a degree that we'll see within those sea surface temperatures. So On years where we typically see warmer waters, that depicts one thing. On years where we typically see cooler waters, that depicts one thing. And average years is going to be enzo-neutral. So if we want to go ahead and throw up that graphic there, kind of dig into a little bit about that. So basically these are not the only things that will determine a seasonal forecast pattern. Typically, you know, we're looking at about three months for a seasonal forecast, a little bit further ahead. But the enzo-neutral This is typically what we will see, so it'll coincide with warmer than average. When we talk about climate a lot of times, we're not talking about, oh, it's going to be 32 degrees for the forecast. We're talking a little bit further out. So we basically break it down into two different ways. One is going to be temperatures, and that'll be measured above average and below average. and the other will be the conditions for precipitation. So we're going to be looking at rainfall. A lot of times we're snowfall, and that's going to be wetter than normal or drier than normal. So enzo neutral. This is typically the pattern we're going to see. The northern United States into Canada typically sees cooler than normal. The southern half back towards Mexico. You know, we're going from Texas, a lot of Arkansas and down to the southeast, extending pretty much all the way west back towards California. Going to paint a picture that That area back towards the equator is looking warmer than normal and then we'll see some little wet periods due to the jet stream pulling more moisture through. That'll pretty much transcribe from eastern portions of Texas making its way northeast, you know, back towards pretty much Pennsylvania in that area, then off to the southeast. So that's an area we typically see a little bit wetter. Now when we switch over, if we want to go ahead and switch over to the next graphic, we'll talk about El Nino. So this is what we saw last year. These are typical setups. When talking about The northwestern coast of northwestern tip of California expanding back east back towards Ohio, Indiana, and that'll continue to expand even for the north. So this is dividing pretty much Missouri in half only back towards Canada that typically we will see warmer than average conditions and off. kind of to the contrary to the South, this is going to be pretty much Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, expanding east towards Louisiana, including Florida, and even back towards portions of South Carolina. That is typically cooler than average, but that whole region there, including California, is actually wetter than normal on El Nino years, while, you know, northern Arkansas, expanding all the way back towards into Canada, from east to west basically across much of the United States is typically drier than normal and that actually has to do where the low pressure is off the western coast and how it pulls the jet stream back across much of the continent. Now when we talk about La Nina which We're going to be transitioning in September, November. I want to say into the 70 percent chance that this is what we're going to be seeing into if we go to the next graphic. We're going to be talking about what we're going to probably be experiencing as we head off into the upcoming duck season, which is a lot of times going to be depicting drier than normal conditions from pretty much you split California in half and you draw a line all the way across to the East Coast. That's splitting through pretty much portions of Oklahoma, central portions of Arkansas all the way back east to the coast and south. Those are typically drier than normal conditions and some areas right now, a drought monitor across the United States, not necessarily looking good for eastern portions of areas like here in Missouri. We're starting to see that creep back into play in the forecast for us here, looking a little bit drier. So any of those drier conditions that will persist, you know, that could be limiting a lot of areas for people to be out hunting in. Now, one thing that does talk about with that is that could mean an area for duck hunters to see less water, which means those ducks have to really focus on those points a little bit more. But then you go just a little bit further north, we have two separate areas that are weathered and normal. This is going to include a lot of Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, portions of Iowa, even back east towards Ohio. Kentucky. That's wetter than normal typically because of where we see the jet stream bring the moisture inflow back. And then also the northwestern portions of the United States, northern California and areas just north of that are typically going to be wetter than average. And then that whole pocket there from northern California all the way back to the east towards Minnesota And Canada is typically going to be looking cooler than normal for conditions. And this is kind of what, and I'm sure Scott's going to go into this a little bit more here in a bit, is kind of where we're going to be heading with our forecast for this upcoming duck season.

Mike Brasher: Scott, this is awesome. This is great. Anything to add to that, Scott? I have a number of questions, but I want to give you an opportunity to chime in here.

Skot Covert: Yeah, I think this would be a good juncture to state that We're talking in generalities. We're painting with a really broad brush. We're not giving exact 70 forecasts here. These are climate patterns, but they're just that. La Nina and El Nino are not hard rules. It's not as black and white as I think we would like it to be. And let me just give you a couple of analogs just to illustrate how One La Nina may be different than the next. Back in 2020, 21, and 22, we had a rare situation where those three winters in a row, we had La Nina. In Little Rock in 2020, Little Rock measured a trace of snow. In 21, we measured 20 inches of snow, and in 22, we measured six inches of snow. So, you can see that in those three back-to-back La Nina years, we ran the gambit on winter well above and well below average. So there's no hard rule here when it comes to La Nina and El Nino, but these are broader patterns and there will be deviations. If you live in an area that La Nina might favor drier than normal conditions, that's not to say you're not going to get a little bit of rain here and there. If you live in an area where our La Nina maps may suggest you have warmer than average temperatures, that doesn't mean you're not going to get a cold front. I think those things are likely, especially with how variable La Nina patterns can be. But when the winter is over with and the record books are closed, when the numbers are averaged out, that's where we end up with these maps. More often than not, parts of the southern U.S. are probably going to be drier than others. But that's not to say we might not see a little bit of rain here and there. My recommendation is if you do get one of those fronts, you better hunt it.

Mike Brasher: Yeah. And so I have a couple of questions related to chance, some of the things that you stepped through there. I want to go back to last year. El Nino, we came into probably about this time of year, we were talking about a very strong El Nino. And as you just described, the tendency is for that southern half, southern third of essentially the entire U.S. to be wetter than average. Yet, December of last year, and some of those, I think maybe even up until January, it was Very, very dry. So abnormally dry relative to an El Nino, and that kind of emphasizes some of what Scott was saying there. And y'all correct me if I'm wrong in any of my recollection here, but my question is, like, what happens during a given year that would make it deviate so much from the average for an El Nino?

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, and I mean, kind of what Scott's saying, there's a lot of different things. This is just a typical pattern. One of the other things is what we call the MJO, which would be the Madden-Julian Oscillation. And basically, if you were to take the globe and you print it out on a flat piece of paper and cut it in half, it's pretty much one side is going to be seeing a more active, wetter season. than the other half and that typically will switch 60 day to 90 day pattern so that's also a different play on that. We also have things that we call atmospheric blocking so sometimes this is a little bit more localized not necessarily over a long-standing period of time where we have a high pressure system pretty much sit there for five days or more and it can completely dry out an area and then also kind of alluding to what you're talking about you know we were in that long-standing drought you know we saw the duck numbers really decrease for pretty much a substantial amount of time there as a whole. And going into that, we had a lot of issues here in Missouri, just to let alone, we had wildfires too because of that. But a lot of it is tied to other things, sometimes localized. So high pressure systems could be an issue and other things that could be affecting it, like the Madden-Julian Oscillation could play a big part on that. I did a couple.

Skot Covert: Go ahead, Scott. Oh, sorry. A couple other thoughts that may influence what we saw last year. this is really technical and really nerdy, but you get into the details of, it's not just how cool or how warm those waters are in the Pacific, it's where those pockets of anomalies are. If, for instance, the cooler waters are closer to the South American coast, you call that kind of an Eastern La Nina, that's going to displace the jet stream in a certain area, that blocking high sets up in a certain area, versus if it was further towards the West, closer to Asia, that blocking high is a little bit further towards the west as well, may even be a little bit stronger. So, there's a lot of other variables aside from just sea surface temperatures. It's where those waters set up. And another thing to keep in mind too, and this gets into the granular details of the numbers, and this is data and it's boring and no one ever dives into it, right? We're talking seasonal averages. So, December, you're very right. But what about November, and then January, February, and beyond? And so the record books doesn't look at it in the sense of what we traditionally as humans care about winter or think of winter, and it certainly doesn't look at it through the lens of duck season dates. But it spans those three months, and then it averages it all out. So you might've had a really dry first part and you might've had some water on the back end.

Mike Brasher: So Scott, is this a good place to transition to some of those sort of model runs, those other graphics that you, that you provided with us? And I'm just gonna let you talk about what these are. How do we interpret these? Um, so take it away.

Skot Covert: Yeah. So the first thing to keep in mind is, as you look at some of these charts here, these are models. but they're not forecast. And that's something that as meteorologists, we kind of battle with these days. We use these models and we take the data. We also take our own understanding, our own education and experience, and then make a forecast. But this is how the sausage is made. This is kind of a broad look at three of the larger models. The first on the left is the North American Multimodal Ensemble. It's a newer model, but it's taking into account a lot of different data. Top is going to be precipitation. Bottom row of charts is going to be temperature anomalies. And so we're just comparing based off of the average. And that North American multi-model ensemble continues to show a pretty typical La Nina pattern, really dry in the southern part of the United States, maybe a little bit wetter in the Pacific Northwest, some of the Canadian prairies. The middle run, that's gonna be the single European model, seasonal outlook, and it shows a pretty similar pattern. The CFS, which is a singular American model, is showing a pretty typical anemia pattern as well, although maybe it's a bit more opportunistic when it comes to rainfall in parts of the northern tier of the Mississippi Flyway. You get over into the Ohio River Valley, which is really dry right now. They could definitely use some anemia rains. It's a bit more aggressive there. The bottom row, that's going to be your temperatures, and you can just glance at a 30,000-foot view and you can see, wow, all of those models are shaping up to be somewhat of a warm winter. Again, these are models, not necessarily a forecast. If you do look at the weather forecast from NOAA, the seasonal outlook, it really resembles a lot of this. The data that we're seeing suggests a pretty mild winter with some dry conditions in the south. And, you know, you look to these models and you hope, well, maybe there's a trend. Maybe there's a trend that's going to change the NOAA forecast. And maybe it's going to bring us a little bit more rain to the south or cooler temperatures Not really seeing that in this latest set of data.

Mike Brasher: And so that the NOAA forecast, seasonal forecast that you talked about, we had some of those graphics earlier, but we took those out because it showed something pretty similar to what we're seeing here. You were saying, I think we were saying in an email that there's going to be another forecast, a seasonal forecast coming out later this week. Is that right?

Skot Covert: That's right. It'll come out on Thursday the 19th. There'll be another one closer, I want to say in November, and just like in a seven-day forecast, they get more accurate the closer you get. One of the reasons we might see a little bit of change is La Nina, while yes, there's a high degree of confidence that we are going to transition to La Nina, it's happening much slower than originally thought. Back in early 2024, we really thought it was going to be a quick onset, and we were anticipating, based off of model data, that it was going to be a strong La Nina, but it's pretty evident at this point that we're probably the odds are favoring a weak La Nina maybe perhaps to a lesser extent a moderate La Nina. That just goes to show that some things can change and the closer we get the more accurate they're going to be.

Mike Brasher: This is probably a good time to take a break. I want to come back and ask you a little bit about how it seems surprising to me that we can transition so quickly from a strong El Nino to a potentially what we thought earlier was going to be a strong La Nina. I want to talk a little about that and maybe a few other things, and then we'll close things out by talking about what is being a meteorologist in amongst some duck hunting friends, what do a lot of those conversations look like. We'll take a break and we'll come right back and finish the conversation. So Chance and Scott, thanks so much for being here. Of course. Thank you. Welcome back, everyone. We are here again with Chance Gotch and Scott Covert, two meteorologists that are joining us and helping step us through sort of our understanding of El Nino, La Nina, what it may mean for us this year. And during the break, we did pull out, put back in that graphic showing the seasonal forecast from NOAA from both a temperature and precipitation standpoint. So, Chris, if you can go ahead and put that up. And then Scott, I'll just kind of throw it to you to talk about this. I was a little, I was a little confused or misunderstood earlier that this was the forecast specific to this year as opposed to the general La Nina trend.

Skot Covert: So, um, yeah, so this is going to be, uh, for three specific months, this is going to be for November, December, and January. Uh, so you're looking at a 90 day window of where do we think we're going to fall in relation to the normal or to the average of a certain location? And it looks really similar to all three of those model runs. It looks pretty similar to a typical La Nina pattern. Pacific Northwest, probably going to have a decent amount of precipitation. Maybe if we're lucky, we can pull some of that precipitation over into the Ohio River Valley, near the Great Lakes, extending into the Northeast as well. Those are areas that are actually pretty dry right now. Temperature wise, a lot of the country probably going to be above average. And that certainly shakes out with everything we're seeing. Again, NOAA is going to update this later this week, and they'll probably update it one more time. I think in November before we actually enter into that period.

Mike Brasher: You know, if I'm a hunter in a mid-latitude state, that looks like a pretty good forecast for me if we're getting some rain and if it's going to be, perhaps, if everything plays out the way these things do. I mean, as we've talked about, rarely do you get a year that's truly average, right? There's the variation all around that. But if you get some cold outbreaks to the north, And if it stays warm to the south, if you're a mid-latitude hunter, you know, you could be, you could be pretty excited. So, uh, and Chance, I would consider you a mid-latitude hunter.

Chance Gotsch: Yeah. Yeah. And for us right now, it looks good in the longer terms. Now, uh, current conditions, we're starting to get a little bit worried again. Um, I I'm sure Scott down in Arkansas and Southeastern states, a little bit more excited about the rainfall they just received from, um, what was remnants of Hurricane Francine, but we're kind of worried now with our current drought conditions. We're starting to see across the state for pumping water and stuff like that, but hopefully you know we just hold out a little bit longer. The current forecast even out to 14 days not looking great, but a little bit further out. Hopefully those equal chances will kind of get things kind of where they need to be. We need a little bit above average in trends, so it'd be nice to see that kind of move down a little bit further southwest. Chances of above average rainfall, but for the standpoint right now, it's not looking dire by any means.

Mike Brasher: Scott, I want to talk to you about. about transitioning from El Niño to La Niña. What can you tell us about how that happens? I mean, do we even know, do we even have any understanding of what's causing these periodic changes in sea surface temperatures in Equatorial Pacific? Just kind of educate us a little bit.

Skot Covert: Sure, so at the core of it, it's just about Earth seeking balance. It's Earth always in pursuit of equilibrium. In fact, it's actually really common to have weak La Nina follow a strong El Nino. And so in many ways, even before the models were progging this, most people suspected, well, if we're going to go from a strong El Nino, historically speaking, we can expect at least a weak La Nina to follow in the next year. So it's all about those trade winds. Retreating back, resulting in that upwelling, that sets up the cooler temperatures in the ocean. That's where you start to get those atmospheric circulation changes, the blocking high develops. So almost in the sense of there's no such thing as really average. Average is just a waypoint in between two different extremes. This is just the normal average back and forth.

Mike Brasher: Chance, anything to add?

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, no, that was really good what Scott said. Basically, if you want to think about the temperatures of the sea surface temperatures back into the Pacific, almost think of this as we had the warmer waters. Think of it from the Eastern Pacific to the Western Pacific splitting in half. You pretty much just have the warmer water sloshing back and forth, and that determines where we're at. We had the warmer waters off to the coast, and now we're switching off, so it's that transitional period.

Mike Brasher: Well, so we will talk more about… forecast and actual weather events as they're unfolding here throughout the fall and winter, have you guys back. And we've got a couple of other meteorologists that we've made connections with, and we're going to experiment with a few things as significant weather systems actually unfold, to the extent that you're going to be able to join us, acknowledging what you were saying earlier. A lot of times when there are these significant events, then your schedule gets busier. So we're going to work around all of that as best we can. But I wanted to talk about sort of your personal experiences as a meteorologist and a duck hunter. How many phone calls do you get from your friends, your hunting partners, wanting to know the inside information on weather patterns and kind of planning seven, 10 days out? Scott, what can you say about that?

Skot Covert: Oh, man. In Arkansas, I feel like the ratings are… Definitively going to increase during duck season alone. Uh, people just looking for that seven day forecast. Uh, you're exactly right. People always, and I, I I'm confident chances going to have the same experience. People always want to know that inside information. The truth is we're pretty transparent about it. Uh, there may be some outliers that would be responsible for us to go on air with, but what we're presenting is probably what we actually think. Right. Uh, In terms of the long term, the thing is, we can see some signs, day 10, day 14, day 21, out in some of those models, but I don't necessarily have enough confidence in that data at that range to tell my buddy, hey, take off work, spend a couple hundred bucks, go do your duck hunt then. I don't want to be responsible for that. Get a lot of phone calls, a lot of questions, but we're pretty transparent on those seven days.

Mike Brasher: Chance, same with you?

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, I honestly I think the thing I've noticed the most since starting meteorology was my friends are a lot more in tune with weather than I could have ever imagined. I mean a lot of times I'm seeing stuff happening that's a little bit further out and I'm getting my buddies calling and texting me like soon as a model puts out something, a lot of times too far out, and they're like, oh, this is going to happen. What do you think? So it's kind of funny to see them. And I'm watching them actually go through some of the models with me, which has kind of shocked me in the last couple of years. I'm like, how do you know about all this? So it's kind of funny to see that. But yeah, definitely get a lot of calls from friends and some buddies that are guides of mine and definitely very proactive on trying to get towards me. I definitely have a lot more friends, I feel like during duck season, with people calling my lines than other times.

Skot Covert: There's not a group of people out there that have more weather apps than duck hunters. They've got every app and they're looking for every answer and, and one shows one thing and they can track those trends so closely. Oh yeah.

Mike Brasher: That's it's so fun. Um, whenever you, we, we, especially at Southern latitude, um, it's, it's fun at a Northern latitude now where you're trying to, you're looking forward to those first cold outbreaks. Um, and then of course, once you get a little farther into fall, then they start to lament the, the rip. repeated nature of those cold outbreaks because they know it means their season's coming to a close and then we get excited because of that. I guess I wanted to talk briefly about about the area that is most important to us as North American duck hunters, and that is the prairie pothole region. We had some rain earlier and snow earlier this year fall across the U.S. portion of the prairies. We talked with a friend of ours last week who had just gone hunting in Canada, I think southwestern Manitoba, and have also read some things online about conditions, wetland conditions in Alberta and Saskatchewan, especially Alberta. Things are really, really dry. The rain we received earlier this year was beneficial. It was short-lived. It recharged soil moisture to some extent, but then it turned dry again. What do we know about… You've talked it through some of this, Scott, but I want to, I guess, drill down a little bit more. You know, can we be optimistic maybe about increased probability of getting some, uh, welcome precipitation up in the Canadian prairies this year? We need it badly up there.

Skot Covert: I think you can be optimistic. I think the question is, do we get that frost still in place before that precipitation happens? Um, you look back to 2020, 21 and 23, three consecutive years of La Nina, and we all know what that rendered for us in terms of prairie conditions. So, if you can get that frost still, perhaps there is reason to be optimistic. And I think, based off of some of what we're seeing right now, the timing of that rain, while it may not be necessarily beneficial to duck hunters in terms of season opportunity, maybe it comes towards the end of the season when that southern migration, they're flying back north, maybe that's coinciding with some increased precipitation events. So, late winter, early spring, which could be beneficial around those times.

Mike Brasher: And then Chance, how closely do you keep an eye on weather patterns up there in the prairies? Because you're a duck hunter and you know the importance of that area.

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, pretty closely. I mean, especially, you know, we talked about the last several years with how dry it's been. And, you know, we always look forward to the national numbers coming out every year, the fall migration numbers. And so pretty closely attention, you know, with it being dry, kind of like you said, we got a little bit of a recharge. And I think a lot of pretty much the Midwest felt this throughout this past year. You know, we saw extreme drought and it really hurt our areas. You know, a lot of people hunting the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. I mean, we had barges having to do dredging just for ships to get down there. So it's been nice to see a little bit of a recharge and upkeep in those conditions to get us back. But we are already starting to go back towards those drier conditions. So kind of like Scott said right now, optimistic about the second half of the upcoming duck season, possibly seeing a little bit more into that, but more so just on the northern flight back, possibly being something that we're kind of a little bit more optimistic about than necessarily the actual duck season ahead to start off.

Mike Brasher: Okay, we've talked about the typical patterns associated with La Nina. We've talked about the early season forecast or the seasonal forecast that Noah has put out. What are the wildcards that could change things for the way we experience weather? Scott, I'll go to you for this question.

Skot Covert: Watch the tropics. If you can get early rain between the next month, month and a half, Uh, that's a good thing. Try to hold onto that water. We have, of course, had Francine moved through parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, uh, Arkansas, parts of Missouri as well. That rain was really beneficial in an area that really needed it. And without it, just the pattern in general, wouldn't have supported a good precipitation event. You can also see some pretty good tropical systems move in through the Atlantic flyway as well. So Atlantic and Mississippi flyways, if you can get a good tropical system to move through, that's good. I think the odds are decent. The forecast called for an above average hurricane season this year. We have not seen that necessarily materialize just yet, although Although La Nina setups often favor more tropical activity just because of a decrease in wind shear. So it's very possible as La Nina finally makes its return that we do see a more active latter half of hurricane season. We're really just now getting to peak of hurricane season. So the wild card there is that could change all of this. If you get early water, you're probably going to be in good shape without a landfalling tropical system. I wouldn't be too optimistic.

Mike Brasher: And then, so Chance, anything else from like your perspective, and I guess I'm thinking about wild cards that would originate from other sources, whether we're thinking severe outbreaks of cold weather that we could, again, recognizing we're just talking about averages and, as you put it, Scott, sort of a waypoint from one end to the other. I really like that. But are there other wild cards that would challenge some of the seasonal tendencies from a temperature standpoint down here in the southern end of the flyway?

Chance Gotsch: Yeah, really, we watch the development of the highs and lows a lot of times and kind of the setup. I mean, we just talked about a little bit about this with Scott, you know, the last tropical system Frantina came through was great. But if you have a high pressure system set up at a different spot, where for us, it completely dried us out, that's an issue. And for low pressure systems, you know, we a lot of people like to talk about the polar vortex. The reason I say that is, These things have been around for a long time. It's just they changed the actual names. A lot of people get excited about those. But, you know, we could have a system that sends a little bit further south that really cools us down. And if you have a high pressure system on the right side of that, that could stay and put there for almost a week at a time. So stuff like that, we really watch really closely. Blocking patterns is what we call them. Basically doesn't allow anything else to go by it. So a low pressure system gets set up on the right spot. could drive those temperatures a little bit cooler in that area for a little bit longer duration, and it also could lead to an increase in the amount of precipitation that area sees.

Skot Covert: I think we will see those polar vortex lobes spin off. We might not get many of them, and I think that's the key here is when that does happen, when you see that showing up in the forecast, I would take advantage of it while you could.

Mike Brasher: That's a good reminder. And so from a polar vortex, polar vortex disruption, atmospheric river, if we're talking about the Pacific Coast, those are some weather patterns that we've become familiar with here over the past few years, at least me personally. So we'll take advantage of those opportunities to reconnect with y'all as they start to develop. or should they develop. And I guess I'll take this opportunity to any of our listeners, you know, one of the things that we want to do, as I mentioned, is repeat this periodically throughout the hunting season. So if you know of any meteorologists in your area that are also waterfowl hunters, Drop us a line here at Ducks Unlimited, dupodcast at ducks.org. We can try to get in touch with those individuals. Scott and Chance have helped us out in a couple of ways. We're trying to connect with a few other meteorologists, but we're looking for some folks in the Pacific Flyway, in the Atlantic Flyway, so if you're one of those, if that's you, or if you know of a meteorologist that is a waterfowl hunter, Let us know and we'll see if we can make that connection. This time, I think that's about it. I think this has been as informative as I anticipated it being, and then some with the additional graphics that you guys can bring, but most importantly, the expertise that you can bring from a professional perspective. But I'm going to give each of you an opportunity to provide any final words to our listeners. And Scott, I'll go to you first.

Skot Covert: I think for a lot of folks in the southern portions of the flyways, the outlook may not be necessarily favorable. It may not be something that you get excited about. I wouldn't buy into the doom and gloom necessarily. Keep in mind, this is a pattern, not a hard set of rules. It's not black and white. There will be fronts. They might not be as frequent, and they might not be as strong, but there will be fronts. There will be rain. And overall, I think we are going to be drier, but there still will be opportunities out there.

Chance Gotsch: and chance. Yeah, kind of like Scott said, this is not doom and gloom necessarily. With those low pressure systems that really dive deep, I mean, you're still going to have the opportunity to have great hunts. And a lot of times when we do see those drier conditions, if they do continue to play out across the southern half, you know, think, you're not seeing as much opportunities in places to hunt, but that means more ducks in those smaller areas, possibly.

Mike Brasher: Well, a couple of days ago whenever we first connected trying to plan this episode, both of you told me that you were excited about this because typically you're afforded only 30 seconds or a minute maybe to talk about weather from the perspective of waterfowl hunters during your day job. but that you could talk about it for 45 minutes or all day if the opportunity presented itself. So, we've been talking about weather and ducks for about 45 minutes. So, thanks for your contributions there, and we're glad that we can make this connection and make this partnership begin to happen. We're really excited about it. So thank you guys. Special thanks to Chance Gotch, our weekday meteorologist for ABC17, KMIZ out of Columbia, Missouri, and Scott Covert, chief meteorologist with CBS 5 News, KFSM, Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and two fantastic meteorologists and duck hunters just like the rest of us. We thank you all for being here and for contributing to this exciting conversation. We thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for the great job he does in setting up all of this new technology and additional complexity in his job. And to you, the listener and viewer now on Ducks Unlimited's YouTube channel, we thank you for tuning in. We thank you for your support of wetlands and waterfowl conservation. And as our friend Scott Stevens says, life is short, you better hunt. Have a good one, y'all.