This week’s drought summary
This week, moderate to heavy precipitation fell over the northern Great Plains, parts of the Upper Midwest and much of the south-central and northeast U.S. This led to widespread improvements in drought conditions and abnormal dryness in these areas, as precipitation deficits lessened and soil moisture and groundwater and streamflow improved. Meanwhile, the West region was much drier this week than the last few, so few changes were made there, and mostly long-term drought and abnormal dryness continued across much of the region. A Kona low affected the Hawaiian islands this week, dumping heavy amounts of precipitation in the form of thunderstorms and high mountain snows on the Big Island, which led to improvements over most of the islands.
South
Moderate to heavy rain fell this week across the eastern half of the south region, roughly to the east of Interstate 35 in Texas and Oklahoma. Due to increasing streamflow and soil moisture, and decreasing precipitation deficits, improvements were made across much of the eastern half of the region, including a small part of eastern Oklahoma, much of Arkansas, east Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. In parts of Texas that missed out on the rains, degradations were made in a few spots where precipitation deficits, and in some cases streamflow deficits, mounted. Widespread severe, extreme and exceptional drought continued across much of central and western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.