Drought at southeast US is expanding

[cycloneye]

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2004/s2213.htm

Bad news for the folks here who live in the southeast states and I hope that plenty of rain falls soon to aliviate it and not propagate the fires that haved started in some areas.

[GAStorm]

We just got out of a long term drought that lasted a few years, so this is really not good! If we can't get some decent storms here soon, our only hope will be from tropical storms and hurricanes!

[Rainband]

My area of florida is in the clear. I remember 98 99 and 2000 though

[cycloneye]

Great for your area Johnnathan.

[Rainband]

Great for your area Johnnathan.

1998 especially, wildfires were really bad. It's not that bad this year..thank God

[PTrackerLA]

We're close to entering a slight drought here in south Louisiana but I don't think it will get serious. We do have some pretty good rain chances this weekend for the first time in a while and February was a very wet month.

[donsutherland1]

Cycloneye,

This situation doesn't look good there through the near-term.

Although I don't have the quantity of data for the Southeast as I have for the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, a look at the core analogs I employed for my May outlook for the Washington, DC-Boston region suggests that the weather in the Southeast, particularly Florida, will see below normal to much below normal rainfall for May. In addition, two of those three core analogs indicate temperatures will average above normal for the month.

Whether the emerging drought and warmth will begin to feedback--helping generate hotter and drier conditions than would otherwise be the case--remains to be seen.

[donsutherland1]

For those who are interested, here are the latest soil moisture anomalies:

As of the most recent day:
<img src="http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/soilmst/img/curr.w.anom.daily.gif">

For the most recent 12 months:
<img src="http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/soilmst/img/curr.w.anom.gif">

[Stormsfury]

After the prolonged almost 5 year drought, which was the worst on record for many in the Southeast, including ALL of South Carolina, we've had a long stretch (18 months) of plentiful rains, but things have quickly turned dry yet again. Amazingly enough, the thunderstorms earlier this month, plus where it did rain during the wintertime, and early spring, have been fairly plentiful and heavy (which the yearly rainfall to date is around normal here).

One thing though for the Southeast is ... this is typically the driest month of the spring, and for some, the year, so I'm not overly concerned as of yet, but if May continues dry, and into June, well, could very well be a different story.