Dry week across most of the High Plains
Most areas of dryness and drought received little precipitation this past week. Where there was significant precipitation, some improvement was noted, particularly in the Northwest where surplus precipitation fell during the previous 3 to 4 weeks. Moderate to heavy rains also brought improvement to southern Florida and patches of eastern North Carolina.
Meanwhile, precipitation was patchy from the central Gulf Coast across eastern Texas to the Red River Valley (south), bringing a mixed bag of improvements and deterioration there. But across the dry regions in California, the Four Corners States, central and southern Texas, and northern Florida, only a few tenths of an inch of precipitation was recorded at best. Some areas of deterioration were noted in these areas, but most areas remained unchanged from last week.
Areas of abnormal dryness cover much of coastal Mississippi and Louisiana, far western Louisiana, and southwestern Arkansas. Similar conditions have been observed in part of the Red River Valley and adjacent southwestern Oklahoma, with an embedded area of moderate drought observed there. Most significantly, a large area of generally moderate to severe drought extends across much of eastern, central, and southern Texas, with a few patches of extreme (D3) drought in southwestern Texas. Patchy light to moderate precipitation brought improvement to isolated areas in Mississippi, Louisiana, eastern Texas, and the Red River Valley, but most of these regions remained unchanged. In contrast, precipitation totaled less than 0.2 inch in central and southern Texas, bringing drought intensification to several areas there, though most locales remained unchanged from last week. In eastern Texas, precipitation totaled 5 to 8 inches below normal for the past 90 days, and in much of southwestern Texas, only 10 to less than 50 percent of normal has been measured since early December 2019.
Surplus precipitation has dominated this region for many months now in areas north and west of Indiana. Lesser amounts have been observed from there eastward through Ohio, but really not close to D0 threshold. From the Great Lakes to the northern half of the Mississippi, precipitation surpluses of 9 to locally over 18 inches for the last 6 months are fairly common, and amounts accumulated since at least early 2018 are well above normal in most places.
It was a dry week across most of the High Plains, with light to moderate precipitation limited to south-central Kansas and central through northern sections of Wyoming. As a result, there was some reduction in the extent of D0 and D1 in south-central Kansas, and D0 coverage was reduced a bit in northern and western Wyoming, Snowpack has improved in the state, with most sites in western areas reporting near to slightly below normal amounts for this time of year. Snow water equivalent in the reconfigured D0 areas, however, were measured in the 10th to 30th percentile at several sites, though most were a little closer to normal. In the large area of D0 to D2 from southern Wyoming through Colorado and a small part of adjacent Kansas, the dry week kept conditions unchanged.
