For the first time in quite a while The US Drought Monitor is showing the eastern half of the US to be out of the drought range. But look at Texas! And Oklahoma! Tornadoes and floods don’t help all that much it would seem.
How long since your area has had a good soaking? We got some rain and “heavy weather” a day or two after the Moore disaster; nothing since.
Today is the first sunshiny day we’ve had in about a week. Thoroughly soaked, thanks.
Central Iowa, moderate to severe drought range for the past year, but I think it’s over. Not much snow but we’ve had a really wet spring, several soaking rains, and from what I’m hearing, it’s still too wet for field work. Rain predicted every day this week too.
The last few days have been clear in South Florida, but we’ve had some pretty horrendous showers in the last week. As recently as Friday we had a flood warning and severe storm warning.
We’re just entering our rainy season. It’ll be many a month before we get dry here.
Massive rains don’t help droughts in our area, because we can’t drain it into storage areas fast enough. We have a canal system and pumps that send the water out to the ocean, instead of flooding our streets.
PNW, do you really have to ask? 
Rain? Is that where water just falls right out of the sky?
It rained here on May 10, about a tenth of an inch at my house. The time before that, on April 9, we got about a fifteenth of an inch. For this “rainfall year” (from October through January), our precipitation totals have been between 15% and 25% of normal.
We’re slowly easing out of drought up here in Minnesota. We’ve had a very wet spring. But then, as per a conversation with my father yesterday, we both remember that last spring was pretty wet too, and then June/July/August were parched.
I check the drought monitor about once a week. Kinda surprising to see the worst of it expanding into Colorado and down that direction. The core of it had been in Nebraska and Kansas.
Looks like the CO-KS-NM-OK-TX dust bowl region is really really dry right no :eek:
It snowed this weekend here in Quebec. Blech. It is being a cold wet spring.
In late February things were looking really bad for us in the populated areas of Colorado. All the big cities along the front range announced water restrictions for the summer. Then came March, April, and May - and 50 inches of heavy wet snow - much more than that in the mountains - and the snowpack went from about 70% of normal to 110% of normal. The reservoirs are still below average due to the last two years, but they are filling up.
Southern Colorado is in a world of hurt, though. Hatch chilies might be really expensive this fall.
Yes, because Hatch chile is grown only in the Hatch valley in southern New Mexico, and the Colorado snowpack, although better than it was looking, is unlikely to do a whole lot for the growers there.
The drought map is seasonal. It does not really address long-term (as in years) drought. For example, there are areas in the “wet” Pacific Northwest that have been in drought for more than ten years that do not show up on the map. For some of these areas to declared the drought is “over” there would need to be a misty rain 24/7/365 non-stop for more than a year. The actual soil moisture deficits are that bad.
The scary part of the current drought maps is the potential for wildfire is very high, coupled with part of Congress that refuses to pay for any disaster unless a corresponding amount to pay for wildfires come out of a different area of the budget (revenue-neutral). If we have a billion-dollar fire season, not to mention a major hurricane (or two), the drought will be the least of our worries.
I know that. I was just saying that Southern Colorado is in the same “worst of the worst” situation as West Texas and New Mexico. The spring snows were largely confined to the northern part of the state, where the rivers run north and east, and are of no benefit to New Mexico.
It’s getting one right now.
The “SL” over SE Colorado/OK Panhandle is just about the geographic center of the famous Dust Bowl, according to the Ken Burns documentary.
Ironic–Just read the Colorado River drought story in the L.A.Times yesterday. Serious stuff.