According to the U.S. Drought Monitor for the week ending on Oct. 30, released Nov. 1, the week was marked by several weather events. The first, Hurricane Willa made landfall as a category 3 storm on Mexico’s Pacific Coast just after the cutoff for last week’s map (8 a.m.). The remnants of this storm brought heavy rain and thunderstorms to Texas, which had already been saturated with excess rain over the last several weeks, and to other states in the southern tier of the country. These rains brought improvements to areas impacted by drought, including the long-term drought areas of Arizona and New Mexico. Moisture from Willa helped fuel the season’s first nor’easter, which soaked the Northeast and brought snow to the higher elevations of New England over the weekend, helping to ameliorate drought and abnormal dryness across the regions. Storms also brought precipitation to the Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest, and the Ohio Valley, bringing drought relief to these areas. Virtually no degradations occurred this week, except for an expansion of abnormal dryness across the Florida Panhandle
The trend toward improvement continued across the High Plains this week as recent moisture helped to improve both short- and long-term deficits. Broad reductions were made in North Dakota as precipitation deficits were reduced, soil moisture was replenished, and ground and surface water conditions improved. Changes include the elimination of extreme drought and a reduction of severe and moderate drought. South Dakota saw 1-category improvements to the drought depiction east of the Missouri River due to reductions in precipitation deficits, increases in soil moisture, reduced evaporative demand and feedback from local experts. Since remaining deficits are at longer time scales, the drought designation was changed from SL to L to reflect this.
