As of the latest drought monitor that was issued this past Thursday, we’ve been able to hold off major drought conditions across our part of the Tennessee Valley. As a matter of fact, there has actually been significant short-term improvement across the Highway 412 corridor of southern Tennessee in what was red on this map a week or two ago, mainly because of the heavy flooding rains that happened in parts of Lewis, Maury, and adjacent counties of Tennessee a few weeks ago. A new drought monitor update comes out this Thursday, and because of the dry conditions and above normal temperatures for the past week or so, we will likely see a worsening of the abnormally dry and drought areas.
While we certainly have seen a bit of rain areawide over the last two weeks, it hasn’t been nearly enough to improve things too much. Almost all of north Alabama is below what is considered “normal” or average rainfall for the past 30 days, with the only surplus areas being near Highway 412 and I-65 in southern Tennessee and then down into the Athens and Huntsville areas of north Alabama… the areas that had enough rain for flash flooding about 3-4 weeks ago. While that is the case, at least the 365-day running rainfall deficits across the area aren’t too bad in most areas… but that is mostly because of the big surplus of rain we had in the first 6-7 months of the year.
While we don’t expect a tremendous amount of rain anytime in the foreseeable future, we look to see a decent areawide 1 to 1.5″ soaking with the storms coming Saturday night into early Sunday morning. That won’t be enough to erase drought areas, but it will help some with the short-term moisture conditions. Then, looking out into the 7 to 14 day period, the NWS Climate Prediction Center forecasts show near average precipitation chances for us… no signs of any big super soakers, but with the drier than normal areas shunted south and southeast of the local area, that at least hints that we should see a few rain chances ahead on through the rest of the month!
