This Week’s Drought Summary
An active weather pattern over the Midwest to southern Plains brought the most precipitation to those areas this week. Warm and dry conditions dominated the northern Plains and the upper Midwest where some areas are experiencing “flash drought” conditions that are not as common this time of year. Dryness over the Southeast is starting to impact more of the region while an active pattern has started over portions of the Pacific Northwest, bringing some moisture over the western portions of the region. Temperatures were coolest over the West and southern Plains and warmest over the northern Plains and into New England.
South
Welcome rains over north and south Texas, Arkansas, northern Louisiana and into southern Oklahoma helped to build on recent precipitation events in some of these areas. Portions of north Texas and into southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana recorded 200-400% of normal precipitation for the week. Southern Louisiana as well as west Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle remained dry. Cooler than normal temperatures through much of Texas and Oklahoma as well as western Arkansas and Louisiana helped to slow down further drought development for this week and even allowed for some improvements. A full category improvement to drought levels was made over northern Texas and into southeast Oklahoma. In Arkansas, extreme and severe drought were improved. Extreme drought was removed from Tennessee this week with improvements in the western portion of the state while abnormally dry conditions expanded in the central and northeast portion of the state. Louisiana had some adjustments to the severe drought in the south as the western portion improved but the area expanded to the east. Additional improvements were made to moderate and severe drought in east Texas and to abnormally dry conditions in south Texas.