If you have ever attended one of my public talks on long-range weather forecasting you may recall how I will say the Atlantic Ocean more so than the Pacific Ocean has a lot to do with precipitation patterns in the northern plains. Our storms tend to track from a westerly direction to the east, meaning, many of our storms that impact us at some point were over the Pacific Ocean and because of that most people think the Pacific Ocean impacts our weather the most. Clearly the Pacific Ocean impacts our weather, but things occurring in the Atlantic can alter storm tracks and so far in 2017, it has been long term pattern changes in the Atlantic that has attributed to our dry year to this point.
Daryl Ritchison