California is seemingly bereft of a normal weather pattern with this summer’s oddities leading to reduced yields of Iceberg and other lettuce varieties resulting in high prices, which may well stretch far into fall.

“I don’t know if there is a normal anymore,” Mark McBride, a sales representative of Salinas, CA-based Coastline, said in mid-August. “I’m about ready to get out my winter clothes just in case.”McBride

California’s coastal valleys near Santa Maria and Salinas have experienced unusually warm nights all summer long, which has resulted in some hollow hearts and other issues that basically reduce plant populations and the weight of each head. Less tonnage per acre has resulted in a demand-exceeds-supply situation, with Iceberg lettuce prices topping $20 per carton.  

In its regular published report about supplies called “Straight Talk,” Tanimura & Antle, another Salinas-based vegetable producer, noted in early August, “We continue to have warm nights and hot days with higher-than-normal humidity. Yields of several leafy vegetables have plummeted due to this abnormal weather. Quality seems like what you would expect in late September or October.”

Speaking specifically of Iceberg lettuce, the report revealed a major reduction in supply. “Lettuce is big, puffy and around 20 percent of budgeted yield. Look for this market to stay high for several weeks.”

McBride noted that budgeted supplies for most California producers are cut back in August when home-grown deals proliferate throughout the country. While production would normally pick up in early to mid-September, he said “we began cutting September lettuce the first week of August.”

He believes the demand-exceeds-supply situation could continue until the end of the coastal valley deals in mid- to late October.

“We may not see this change until we transition to Huron [in the San Joaquin Valley] for the fall deal,” he said.

And McBride noted that many grower-shippers won’t be going into Huron this fall because of California’s drought.

“We will be over there but many will not,” he said. “For the last couple of years you have seen more guys trying to go a bit later in Salinas and start a little bit earlier in the desert and skip Huron.”

If the unusual weather cuts the California deals short, a significant shortage could exist in October.

Denny Donovan, sales manager for Fresh Kist Produce LLC, which sources most of its summer vegetables from the Santa Maria Valley, agreed that the unusually high overnight temperatures are the major culprit.

“Lettuce likes cool nights and we haven’t had any of those,” said Donovan. “We are seeing a lot of soft, hollow lettuce. This market has definitely been created from lack of supplies.”

What should concern buyers is that this rarely ever happens in August. “August is usually a dead month,” Donovan said.

He said weather in California and across the country will be the major factor in determining how long the shortage lasts. California could go back to a weather situation conducive to heavy production and the problem could right itself. Additionally, cool late-summer weather across the country might allow some of the home-grown deals to stretch a bit longer than usual also helping to fill some gaps. Conversely, a late-summer heat wave in strategic production areas might prematurely end local production and exacerbate the problem.

The shortage appears to be mostly in the lettuce category, as supplies of broccoli, cauliflower and most of the other staple vegetables appears to be in concert with demand.  

But Donovan did note that another factor is lurking on the horizon, literally, and that is El Niño.

Meteorologists studying the Pacific Ocean say the warm water patterns that are surfacing from the equator to much farther north off the California coast do point to what could be very heavy fall and winter rains.

“I was driving around Salinas today and I saw a lot of low-lying fields with a lot of broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce,” said Donovan. “The last time we had an El Niño, those fields were under water for three months of the year. That could be a problem.”

Most are predicting that if the El Niño conditions that currently exist do bring huge amounts of rain, they will probably start in late September, with the brunt of the storms hitting from December through February. If that occurs, this season could get cut short, and next season growers would have to delay planting in many fields. Of course, only time will tell.