WATKINSVILLE, Ga. — Georgia farmers who spent the past year bouncing between drought, flooding and spotty rain now face a different risk: a strengthening El Nino that could leave fields waterlogged heading into the next planting season across the state.
University of Georgia agricultural climatologist Pam Knox said a strong El Nino, sometimes described as a super event because of above-normal eastern Pacific sea surface temperatures, is already tracking as powerful. Forecasters put the odds at about 75 percent that conditions will intensify further into what she calls an extra-strong event.
When El Nino peaks around Christmas, Georgia typically sees wetter and cooler weather than normal, especially in the southern half of the state. Knox said this year’s pattern is expected to be strong enough that those effects could arrive as early as November and push farther north across the entire state.
A wet, cool winter usually recharges soil moisture after dry stretches. Last year’s La Nina left soils too dry for spring planting in many areas. Knox said the bigger worry this time is the opposite problem: fields so saturated that low-lying ground becomes hard to work.
Federal climate monitors back the direction of the forecast. The Climate Prediction Center said El Nino strengthened further last month, with the Nino-3.4 index reaching +2.1 degrees Celsius, and that a strong-to-very strong event is likely to continue through January-March 2027.
Knox noted that timing remains uncertain even as the overall wet signal for Georgia agriculture grows clearer this fall for growers watching winter wheat and spring fieldwork windows.
