Check it out! Look look LOOK! After all the dry weather we have had, we FINALLY got a good soaking of rain here across the Tennessee Valley. Over the past 7 days, almost everyone across the area has seen a solid 2 to 3 inches of rain, with some isolated areas seeing as much as 4 to 5 inches! This isn’t a drought busting rain, but it will certainly help with those fields, vegetable gardens, lake and river levels, and helping keep fire conditions at bay for a little while. The entire area is currently labeled in a severe to extreme drought, and any soaking rain like this that we can get is very beneficial. This drought monitor gets updated Thursday morning, but it won’t include Tuesday’s rainfall numbers. It will be the drought monitor update issued *next week* that will fully take into account the rain that we just had.
As we look ahead for the next week or two, there will be other opportunities for rain across the Tennessee Valley and Deep South. Through about Tuesday of next week, it looks like the heavier rain will stay closer to the Gulf Coast. However, we may see more showers and storms toward Wednesday into Thursday of next week. And on top of that, the NWS Climate Prediction Center is outlooking us for above average precipitation for the next 6-14 days. I doubt we end up with enough to remove drought conditions, but we will likely see some noticeable improvement over time, and any improvement on the drought is good news!
