The CattleFax Outlook Seminar, held as part of CattleCon 2025 in San Antonio, Texas, shared expert market and weather analysis yesterday. After the seminar, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays caught up with Meteorologist Matt Makens to hone in on his weather predictions specific to Oklahoma.
Oklahoma Farm Report’s coverage of CattleCon 2025 is powered by Farm Data Services of Stillwater.
Makens remembered the severe drought conditions that clutched the state from last July through October, and the record rainfall experienced in the first week or two of November that changed everything.
“There was not much optimism until that one storm came through,” Makens reminisced. “If you take that one storm off of the map, imagine what the wheat, surface water, stock ponds, all of that – imagine the position for Oklahoma. That storm really saved us because it came through before La Niña triggered itself.”
La Niña systems deliver dry weather in places like Oklahoma, Southern Kansas, and North Texas. Thus far, the system has danced in and out of existence, but Makens is hoping that those areas will catch more of those singularity storms to provide relief over the next year.
Makens predicts a major cool down in mid-February, then possibly again in early to mid-March, but he feels like winter will have run her course by then and the region will warm up rapidly.
“In April, we are off to the races,” he said. “That is when we will start seeing these extended periods of dry weather, with a storm – hopefully, big enough. Another extended period of dryness, and then a storm comes through, so the storm frequency drops. It is going to be a timing-critical kind of year. I’m not screaming drought numbers through the roof. I think the timing of precip will be just enough that this year isn’t as concerning to me as, potentially, next year is if we double up this La Niña. The second year of La Niña is when we just ratchet up the drought. It is permanent and we are hot.”
Historically speaking, Makens believes that El Niño doesn’t have much of a chance. He guessed that there is an 80% chance that either La Niña or neutral conditions will prevail and both are dry indicators for the areas described above.
“There is a little bit of modeling that can go out that far, most stop at six months, but those that go out farther are leaning into that La Niña chance, also,” he forewarned. “The odds currently favor it by about 3 out of 4 chances to get back into La Niña for a back-to-back year.”
