6 September Drought Monitor - Massive Southern Plains Drought Endures, Slightly Intensifies

[hatrack]

National Drought Summary -- September 6, 2011

The discussion in the Looking Ahead section is simply a description of what the official national guidance from the National Weather Service (NWS) National Centers for Environmental Prediction is depicting for current areas of dryness and drought. The NWS forecast products utilized include the HPC 5-day QPF and 5-day Mean Temperature progs, the 6-10 Day Outlooks of Temperature and Precipitation Probability, and the 8-14 Day Outlooks of Temperature and Precipitation Probability, valid as of late Wednesday afternoon of the USDM release week. The NWS forecast web page used for this section is: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/forecasts/.

Overview: For most of those under the influence of drought as depicted by the U.S. Drought Monitor this week, the weather across the country last week can be summed up as either very hot or very wet. On the heels of Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Lee brought very beneficial rains to the Gulf Coast and Southeast before hooking up with a cold front from the west that brought copious rains up and down the Appalachian Mountains from Georgia to southern Pennsylvania. Oppressive heat and fires were the story in the country’s mid-section and southern Plains as no relief was seen there this past week. In a bit of cruel irony, it was the strong and persistent winds of Lee, which just missed the mark of the drought’s epicenter in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, that fanned the large number of fire outbreaks in Texas.

Mid-Atlantic and Northeast: Soaking rains on the order of 4-8 inches or more fell across a good portion of the region bringing 1- to 2-category improvements to the D0-D1 areas in eastern Kentucky, western North Carolina, southern, western and northern Virginia, West Virginia’s southern, eastern and Panhandle regions, western Maryland, Pennsylvania and western/upper New York. Some pockets of D0 do remain in northern Pennsylvania and western New York. The rains of Lee served as a balancing act of sorts for these regions in general as the heaviest rains from Hurricane Irene fell mostly to the east of Lee’s rains in and around the coastal areas.

South Carolina, however, missed out on the tropical moisture leading to a slight push of D3 northeastward along the Georgia border and within the Savannah River Basin region. The past 2 to 4 months have been extremely dry and impacts are being reported in alfalfa and pasture conditions along with stock ponds going dry. According to USDA, nearly 70% of South Carolina’s topsoil condition is at the “short” or “very short” level and 45% of pasture and range land is still in the “poor” or “very poor” condition categorization.

Southeast and Delta: Tropical Storm Lee made a major mark from eastern Louisiana across Mississippi and into western/northern Alabama and northern Georgia as well. Much of southeastern Louisiana, Mississippi and western Alabama are now drought free. Rainfall totals frequented 5 inches or more in many of these areas and led to some improvement in western and northern Louisiana with a 1-2 category improvement. Western Alabama and northern Georgia also saw marked improvement on the order of 1-2 categories. That said, the recent core of intense D3 remains intact across eastern Alabama, Georgia and parts of the Florida Panhandle. Speaking of, the western reaches of the Florida Panhandle also heavy rains and subsequent improvement on the map this week. This also helped out down the coast of FL where D0-D2 were pushed north and eastward off the coastal counties.

Ohio Valley and Midwest: Southern and eastern Kentucky saw the bulk of the benefit from TS Lee with large areas of improvement from D2 to D1 or D0. Eastern Tennessee and eastern Kentucky, in particular, are now drought free as they also saw rainfall totals greater than 5 inches. Pockets of D0-D1 remain across western Tennessee and Kentucky, however. Elsewhere in the Midwest, rains of 1-4 inches led to some improvement in parts of southeastern Minnesota and northeastern Iowa where the D0 has been reduced this week. Moving west from there though, southwestern Minnesota saw an expansion of D0 as die northern Minnesota on the heels of hot temperatures and dryness have led to a push westward of D0 along with the introduction of D2 in the Arrowhead region. Further south, southwestern Missouri has remained very dry the past few months and has experienced well above-normal temperatures leading to expansion of D2 there.

Northern and Central Plains: Just a few changes this week after some recent intense heat followed by a nice break from the heat later in the period. It has also been very dry for some leading to expansion of D0 in east-central South Dakota. A small pocket of D1 has also been introduced this week in that same region given the trend. To the south in Nebraska and Kansas, D0 expands slightly in the Nebraska Panhandle connecting up with the D0 in western South Dakota after above-normal temperatures have been combined with a lack of any rainfall. Another area of D0 has developed in central Nebraska as a result of late season heat and dryness has caused some concerns on pastures, corn and soy beans as we head into harvest. In Kansas, D2 now fills in the southeastern corner as it connects up with the new D2 in northeastern Oklahoma and southwestern Missouri as mentioned above.

Southern Plains: Conditions continue to remain bleak in Oklahoma and Texas with very little help being seen on the horizon after the near miss of Tropical Storm Lee. The only change of note in Oklahoma, as noted above, was in the filling in of D2 completely within the northeastern corner as it meshes with the expansion of D2 in southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri given the oppressive heat, high winds and lack of any significant rains the past few weeks.

Texas also sees very little change this week with only a small area of the Texas Panhandle moving from D2 to D3. The big story has been the fires in Texas though, which were fanned by the backside winds of TS Lee. Year-to-date, 18,719 fires have burned over 3.5 million acres resulting in 2,897 structure losses according to the Texas Forest Service. The 3.5 million total Texas acres burned represents over 50% of the national total acres burned. In addition, 96% of Texas’s pasture and rangelands are rated as “Poor” or “Very Poor” while Oklahoma shows 90% in this category.

The West: It was a relatively quiet week across most of the West. The Four Corners region was above-normal temperature-wise, but the Pacific Northwest enjoyed unseasonably cooler weather. The common denominator is that the entire West saw very little in the way of precipitation. This has led expansion and introduction of D0 into southern Nevada as seasonal and year-to-date totals are now lagging behind the curve and vegetation has been stressed. Water supply is in very good shape region wide though. New Mexico continues to deteriorate the most given the inactive monsoon season thus far leading to an expansion of D3-D4 in the southwestern corner of the state.

Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico: In Alaska, cooler temperatures that past several weeks, coupled with good rainfall has led to a reduction of D0 leaving a small remnant in the Fairbanks region.

In Hawaii, persistent dryness has led Moderate Drought (D2) to expand on the Big Island and has been introduced to Maui this week. In addition, D0 conditions now cover all of Molokai and have been introduced and cover all of Oahu and Kauai as low rainfall has dried things out and brush fire incidents are on the rise in these areas. Pasture condition also continue to worsen on the Big Island and Maui leading to substantial forage losses for ranchers.

Puerto Rico remains unchanged this week.

Looking Ahead: The next 5 days (through April 11) are calling for a pretty quiet week across most of the West in what has been a relatively quiet monsoon season two-thirds of the way in. Another disturbance in the Bay of Campeche in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico seems to be revving up and could press northward over the coming days bringing a chance for more relief to the southeast as a potential Tropical Storm. It is too early to tell exactly where though. Florida, the upper Midwest and the Northeast are also good candidates for ample precipitation during this period. Temperatures are expected to be slightly below-normal (1-3 degrees) for the entire southern half of the country with the northern third expected to see readings 3-9 degrees above normal.

The CPC 6-10 day forecast (September 13-17) is calling for better chances of above-normal temperatures across the western half of the United States and most of Alaska as well. Parts of the Southeast (AL, MS), Ohio Valley (TN, KY, IN, OH) and eastern Great Lakes regions are expected to be below-normal. As for precipitation, the eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine could see above-normal rainfall as can the Intermountain West and Great Basin. Below-normal amounts are still likely across Texas and southern Oklahoma along with the Pacific Northwest and across the northern tier states from Montana to Minnesota. Alaska is also showing better odds of above-normal precipitation.

Author: Mark Svoboda, National Drought Mitigation Center

EDIT/END

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

[aquart]

1. Vast pipelines for oil and gas. Nada for pulling water off our flood plains.

Seems dumb.

[pscot]

2. We'd be talking dust bowl

if they weren't Tapping the Ogallala aquifer on a massive scale.

[Nihil]

3. Looks like someone gave a kid some crayons and told them to colour in Texas ...

Hope the Texas DUers are keeping safe ...
:grouphug: