Video Shows 20 Years Of Wyoming Drought Progression

When it comes to weather, change is normal.

Wyoming is dry now, but at one time it was under the ocean. It was even a tropical swamp at one point. Today Wyoming is considered a high planes desert.

At times there are predictions about the drought that are way off. Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer wrote in 1990: By 1996 the Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses, and shut down computers. 

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Wyoming's wet and dry years flow back and forth mostly due to changing patterns in the Pacific ocean through the La Nina and El Nino effects. Currently, Wyoming, and most of the west, is in a dry spell because of this Pacific pattern.

In the video below you can watch wet and dry patterns changing from 2000 until May of 2021. You'll see how the patterns move wet and dry across different parts of the country over the years.

Since Wyoming is such a big state it makes sense that these wet and dry cycles don't affect the state all at once. Currently, southeast Wyoming is much wetter than the northeastern part of the state. You'll see times of heavy drought and times that Wyoming is not in drought at all.

Dry times are hard times for everyone. Farmers and ranchers have the toughest times of all. But meteorologists are reporting that the patterns in the pacific are changing again. That they do know. What they don't know is exactly when that change will be complete enough the bring wet weather back to Wyoming.