Vietnam's Central Highlands grow most of the world's robusta on a knife's edge of water: the October–January harvest is made by the May–October rains, then the trees flower off dry-season irrigation drawn from reservoirs the same rains filled. One bad wet season hits the market twice, a year apart.
ENSO state · through Sep 2026
very strong El Niño+3.40 · strengthening · Oct 2026 provisional +3.83
The Forecast Network's ERA5 multivariate ENSO index (the series behind celsius.earth/enso); positive is El Niño-like. Monthly means arrive about six weeks after the month; the provisional month is ERA5T and may still move.
Current stage
Wet-season cherry development · Harvest★
Temp, next 2 wk
+0.8°C vs normal
Rain, next 2 wk
51 % of normal
SEAS5, next 3 mo
+2.0°C vs hindcast
Obs rain, 3 mo
147 % of normal
ENSO
very strong El Niño +3.4
The daily sheet · 2026-10-21 to 2026-11-03
Temperature anomaly · °C vs 1991–2025 normal
Rainfall · mm per day, brass dash = normal
Day-by-day ensemble means from the same ECMWF extended run as the weekly ledger — the short-term sheet a desk reads each morning. Days are UTC.
The six-week ledger · ECMWF extended ensemble, 2026-10-21 00z
Temperature anomaly · °C vs 1991–2025 normal
Rainfall · mm per week, brass dash = normal
The belts, first fortnight
Region
Temp anomaly
Rain
% of normal
Central Highlands (Dak Lak–Lam Dong)
+0.8°C
67 mm
51%
Ensemble-mean weekly aggregates over the desk's growing belts (land cells, production-weighted); whiskers show the ensemble spread carried with the mean — an upper bound for a weekly average. Weeks run from the initialisation date.
The plates · the fortnight on the map
Temperature anomaly · Week 1 · 2026-10-21 → 2026-10-27
Rainfall, percent of normal · Week 1 · 2026-10-21 → 2026-10-27
Temperature anomaly · Week 2 · 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-03
Rainfall, percent of normal · Week 2 · 2026-10-28 → 2026-11-03
Temperature anomaly (°C vs normal)≤ −4−4 to −2−2 to −1−1 to −½near normal+½ to +1+1 to +2+2 to +4> +4
Rainfall, percent of normal (% of normal rain)< 4040–6060–80near normal120–150150–200200–300> 300
EC-46 ensemble-mean weekly fields at 0.25°, painted in the Herbarium stepped ramps over the desk's belts (the oxblood rectangles). Near-normal stays paper; sea and no-data carry no ink; rainfall percent is unpainted where the weekly normal is under 2 mm. Cells are honest — drawn at the data's own resolution.
The seasonal ledger · SEAS5, initialised Oct 2026
Run-to-run · the last 6 initialisations
A forecast that holds its shape across initialisations deserves more weight than one that just appeared.
Latest run, month by month
Month
Temp anom
Rain anom
% of normal
Topsoil moisture anom m³/m³
Oct 2026 ◔
+0.9°C
-55 mm
82%
-0.010
Nov 2026
+1.7°C
-68 mm
68%
-0.016
Dec 2026
+2.1°C
-53 mm
47%
-0.028
Jan 2027
+2.1°C
-32 mm
-21%
-0.035
Feb 2027
+2.2°C
-24 mm
-46%
-0.030
Mar 2027
+2.3°C
-37 mm
6%
-0.036
Apr 2027
+2.6°C
-62 mm
35%
-0.047
◔ part elapsed. Anomalies vs the store's ERA5 hindcast climatology; percent-of-normal vs the AgroClim 1991–2025 normals. Topsoil moisture is volumetric water in the top 7 cm — negative is drier than the hindcast normal.
Rain that actually fell · CHIRPS, through Dec 2025
Monthly rainfall over the belts · mm, brass dash = 1991–2020 normal
Last 3 months 147% of normal
CHIRPS v3.0 satellite-gauge rainfall sampled at a lattice of land points across the desk's belts, production-weighted. Observed data, not a forecast.
The crop calendar · what this weather means now
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Wet-season cherry development ★
Harvest
Dry-season irrigation & flowering ★
★ market-critical stage · the outlined column is the current month.
What the desk watches
Wet-season rainfall over Dak Lak: the cherry-fill water and next spring's irrigation reserves are the same rain.
Dry-season heat and reservoir levels through the February–April flowering irrigations, when a shortfall aborts the next crop.
Typhoon remnants at harvest, which knock cherries and stall drying.
Climate drivers
El Niño shortens the wet season and deepens the dry one — 2015–16 and 2023–24 both sent robusta to multi-decade highs on Highlands drought. The ENSO plate is this desk's first read.
