It should surprise absolutely no one at all, but drought conditions continue across the Tennessee Valley, and the latest update to the Drought Monitor from the NWS Climate Prediction Center has ramped up the conditions again. “Extreme” drought conditions, the next from highest level, now cover parts of Lawrence and Giles Counties in Tennessee and Lauderdale and Limestone Counties in Alabama within our viewing area… and they extend over outside of our viewing area into Lincoln County, TN and Madison County, AL. “Severe” drought conditions extend as far north as Maury and Marshall Counties of TN in the viewing area and northeast Colbert and northern Lawrence Counties of AL. At minimum, everyone within our 14 county coverage area is in at least “moderate” drought conditions or worse.
We haven’t been completely rain free around here the last few weeks, but not everybody has been getting the rain. Within the past 7 days, most of our area has gotten half an inch or less, with several locations being completely dry. There have been a few jackpot locations though, mainly in southern Wayne County and southern Lawrence County in TN, down into northern Lauderdale County in AL. A few locations in that zone have gotten as much as 2 to 4 inches of rain in the last 7 days. This is one very isolated zone of heavier rain totals though. Even over the past 30 days, the majority of our area has only seen 1 to 2 inches or so of rain, with only a few locations seeing more than that. That has all of our area running between only a fourth to half as much rainfall as we typically see for the same time period, and a few locations even less than that. In addition, the long-term rainfall deficit of around 2 FEET continues over much of southern middle Tennessee. While we CAN remove drought conditions well before that long-term deficit is erased, it will be easier to fall right back into drought conditions with every dry stretch of more than a few weeks, until that long-term deficit is caught up.
There is good news ahead. While we may not necessarily see enough rain to completely erase the drought conditions unless this new pattern continues for a while, we HAVE broken down the big upper-level heat ridge and shifted it east out into the western Atlantic, and it looks to stay there for at least the next 10-14 days, if not longer. That allows a general troughing in the upper-levels to settle in over our area instead, and that then allows disturbances to be able to move through and spark off rain chances. Even with elevated rain chances, not everybody is going to see rain every single day. Unless there is a tropical system coming through, that just simply is NOT how it works during the summer months. Point blank, period. Still, there’s not a single day the next seven days where we have rain chances under 40%. That’s certainly a better position than we have consistently been in for the last month or two. The latest 7-day rain totals forecast from the NWS Weather Prediction Center office puts our entire area in an additional 1.5 to 2″ of rain through next Thursday. The GFS model generally agrees with this. The Euro model shows a little more, with everybody having a widespread 2 to 3″ with isolated spots up to 4″. The Euro has actually been performing better compared to the GFS with rain coverage the last couple of weeks; so, let’s hope it’s on the right track here!
