Parts of Nebraska are devastatingly dry right now, prompting some to look forward to the incoming El Niño weather pattern. Nebraska Public Media’s Dale Johnson spoke with the Nebraska State Climate Office’s Eric Hunt about what’s lurking around the corner.

Eric Hunt: Well, I’ve heard lots of things to describe the pending El Niño. Super El Niño I think has been the most common one. The prognosis is certainly that we’re going to be into a stronger El Niño.

Dale Johnson: Most of the El Niño stories that I’ve found tend to focus on hurricanes, and Nebraska doesn’t get too many of those.

Hunt: That would be a first.

Johnson: So let’s talk about tornadoes. Does an El Niño weather pattern lend itself to more tornadoes?

Hunt: It could, I mean, I would just say El Niño’s impacts on our sensible weather tend to be strongest starting in September, October, going through the winter and into at least early portion of the spring of the next year. So I think our biggest impacts from this El Niño are going to be probably the very tail end of summer into the next one, early spring. That being said, it would certainly be possible, given the fact that we would likely have a stormier pattern this fall than we’ve had in recent years, which wouldn’t take much for a lot of the state to be stormier than we’ve been in recent falls. So that may open up the possibility for more chances for severe weather, including tornadoes. That may mean next spring might be the one we really have to watch out for. For example, 2024 we did actually have a couple tornado outbreaks in this portion of the country, the Arbor Day tornado outbreak was probably the most prominent one. That was the first tornado outbreak we’d had here in about 10 years. That was coming off at El Niño, so I would say next spring might be the year that we really would want to watch out for more severe weather, including tornadoes, in this portion of the country.

Johnson: So these patterns last more than a year?

Hunt: El Niño tends to peak in what we call the boreal winter, so the northern hemisphere winter, so it probably would peak sometime between Christmas, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Valentine’s Day, and then would start slowly weakening as we head into next summer, and then it would maybe go back to more neutral conditions, or maybe even flip over to a La Nina, but the impacts from El NNiño do tend to stick around for a while, so I would anticipate starting to see some impacts from it. I think we’re already starting to see some impacts from El Niño development. I think they’ll pick up a little bit the summer, then they’ll really be noticeable, at least to a point, in fall, winter, and into next spring.

Johnson: What does an El Niño do to temperatures and precipitation?

Hunt: We tend to get better chances of rain, so we don’t often have major drought development during a summer where we’re going in El Niño. We tend to get some precipitation. We also tend to be about average, maybe some cases a little bit cooler on temperatures. We can get some severe weather. Getting into the fall, I think we do tend to be a bit wetter and sometimes cooler than average in October. We often obtain those really mild winters during a strong El Niño by having a lot of days, the highs of the upper 30s to mid-upper 40s, lows in the maybe the low 20s in this part of the state, maybe further west it’ll be a little bit colder, so it’s not necessarily that just T-shirt weather. It often can actually be kind of damp and to some degree kind of miserable, but we just don’t tend to have as much of the 10 to 15 to 20-below air temperatures and really cold wind chills, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t necessarily get more snow than we’ve had in recent years, too. If we have more active weather patterns, we could certainly see some more snowfall, and for the western portion of the state and getting in the front range, I cannot stress how critical it will be that we actually have decent moisture this fall, going this next winter, because if we don’t, next spring, next summer may be even worse in that portion of the state and that portion of the country in general.

Johnson: How does El Niño affect agriculture?

Hunt: Well, in this part of the world, it actually tends to be favorable because we tend to get decent summer moisture during the summers we’re going into an El Niño, and often the year following, depending on how quickly we transition into neutral or La Nina. The next growing season can be decent, too, in terms of getting adequate spring moisture so we actually have good moisture, a decent reserve of moisture for the corn, soybean crop, wheat crops often do fairly well, sorghum would have a pretty good year. But elsewhere in the world though, El Niño can be a major issue, because El Niño does tend to cause more drought in places like Australia, Indonesia, India, parts of Sub-Saharan Africa can also be very dry, so there are some bread baskets that do tend to be kind of dry. One concern I do have is other parts of the world where you tend to have less industrialized agriculture than we have here. With regards to efficiencies, they’re more vulnerable to drought than we are here in the U.S., and I am very concerned about drought being a major issue in, say Kenya, India, parts of China this summer. I do think it’s possible we have to start maybe thinking about the possibility of famine. I don’t say that lightly, but if we do see what’s happened in some years, or we just have a very late onset of the monsoon in India, for example, we could be very, very dry in parts of Australia, so that may really impact some global staple crops like corn and wheat.

Johnson: To circle back to where we began before we end our conversation here. Eric, how do you know the day when you go to work that El Niño has begun?

Hunt: The most official way is NOAA and other global centers that follow sea surface temperature anomalies in the upper winds, the lower part of the atmosphere, say we are already a full blown El Niño. I believe we already have met the criteria for El Niño, but once they say it’s official, then it is truly official.

Johnson: Happy El Niño to you, Eric.

Hunt: Thank you, Dale.

Johnson: Eric Hunt from the State Climate Office, joining me for the conversation on Nebraska Public Media. I’m Dale Johnson.

by: Wil Day

Posted: May 27, 2026 / 06:23 PM CDT

Updated: May 27, 2026 / 06:23 PM CDT

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — A K9 assigned to the Nebraska State Patrol sniffed out a major haul of drugs Wednesday morning, authorities say.

The patrol said it happened shortly before 10:30 a.m. on Interstate 80 near Milford, a city of about 2,000 people about 20 miles west of Lincoln.

A trooper stopped the driver of an eastbound Nissan Rogue that was following a semi too closely, the patrol said.

During the stop, the K9 smelled drugs, according to the patrol. Troopers said a search of the vehicle uncovered about 525 pounds of suspected cocaine and 9.3 grams of suspected heroin.

The driver, a 23-year-old California man, was booked into jail on suspicion possession of a controlled substance and possession with intent to deliver.

• Star softball player Jordy Frahm’s transfer to Nebraska has been pivotal in the team’s journey to the Women’s College World Series.
• Frahm, a former two-time national champion with Oklahoma, returned to her home state to play for the Cornhuskers.
• Her presence has elevated the program, making it a desirable destination for other talented players.
• An ACL injury in 2024, which led to a redshirt season, ultimately aligned her with the current successful team.

LINCOLN, NE — The question about the importance of star softball player Jordy Frahm’s decision to transfer to Nebraska had barely left the reporter’s mouth when coach Rhonda Revelle joyously blurted out her answer.

“You mean when Jordy called me at 1:02 p.m. on June 14, and I almost drove off the road when I saw her name pop up?” Revelle said with a smile. “Not that I remember.”

No team in the Women’s College World Series, which begins Thursday at Devon Park, can track its presence in Oklahoma City back to a singular moment the way the fourth-seeded Cornhuskers can.

Frahm — then known as Jordy Bahl — left Oklahoma in the summer of 2023 after winning a pair of national championships and returned to her home state to play for a Nebraska team that had barely qualified for the NCAA Tournament.

Three years later, the Huskers are a legitimate national title contender, thanks in large part to what Frahm can do as their ace pitcher and leadoff hitter.

More: No OU softball in WCWS opens field even more. We rank the title contenders

She’s one of the best players in the country, posting a 20-4 record and 1.14 ERA with 234 strikeouts in 171 ⅔ innings in the circle, plus a .419 batting average, 19 home runs and 50 RBIs at the plate.

But more than her statistical contributions, her presence reinvigorated a program that had made seven WCWS appearances in its history, but only one in the previous two decades (2013).

The timing of Frahm’s phone call to Revelle couldn’t have been better — aside from the car accident it nearly caused.

It tipped over a domino that set in motion all the events that have landed the Huskers at the WCWS nearly three years later, where they’ll face fifth-seeded Arkansas at 8:30 p.m. Thursday. 

Frahm’s presence has made Nebraska a desirable program again.

“People want to play with Jordy,” Revelle said. “When people got in the portal, they would take a call from me because we have Jordy on the roster.”

When Frahm tore her ACL in February 2024, it seemed like a roadblock to the program’s new growth. But it turned out to be an alignment of future events.

Frahm redshirted, which provided the ability to play this season. 

More: Ruby Meylan, Oklahoma State softball ‘ran out of gas’ as Nebraska ends Cowgirls’ season

Without the injury, maybe the timeline would have accelerated, and Nebraska would’ve made its WCWS return last year. But the arrival of key players this season, like transfer center fielder Hannah Coor and freshman pitcher Alexis Jensen, seems to suggest Frahm was needed as the centerpiece of this squad.

“If that didn’t happen, I’m not sitting here today in my fifth year with this special team,” Frahm said. “I’ve thought about that so much this year as it’s gone on. I couldn’t have scripted this. Nobody could’ve scripted this with the way this team came together.”

And without the year of reflection and growth Frahm experienced when softball was taken away from her in 2024, she might not have become the type of leader her team needed.

“I believe that little injury is one of the best things that has ever happened to me in the world of my sports career,” Frahm said. “I just needed that year so bad, to be away from the game, be away from the pressures, be away from everything.

“Just reset and realign with my faith. The joy doesn’t come from the outcomes on the field. That year I was hurt was one of the most joyful years I’ve had and that’s just continued from there.”

Revelle, who has coached her alma mater since 1993 and compiled more than 1,200 wins, witnessed Frahm blossoming in 2024, when she couldn’t be on the field with her teammates.

“The extra year was really important for her for a reset,” Revelle said. “But also for her to get infiltrated in this program with her teammates and her coaches. The relationship she and I have built is second to none, and that extra year was really a time when we didn’t have to focus on softball to do that. So when we got to softball, there was a lot of trust that was built.  

“From the day she stepped on this campus, she raised the intensity and focus, and she brings that with her everywhere she goes.”

Scott Wright covers Oklahoma State athletics for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Scott? He can be reached at swright@oklahoman.com or on X at @ScottWrightOK. Support Scott’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com or by using the link at the top of this page.