Nationwide
In the last week, a few swaths of precipitation occurred across the country, including the Sierra Nevada, northwest California, and western portions of Washington and Oregon. Some high-elevation areas of the West also received precipitation, primarily outside the desert Southwest.
Some areas of the Upper Midwest and Northeast received a quarter of an inch of precipitation to locally over an inch. At the end of the current drought monitoring period (Tuesday morning), a powerful storm system was emerging into the Great Plains, delivering thunderstorms, high winds and wind-driven snow to parts of the Great Plains and Midwest. While some of this precipitation fell overnight Monday into early Tuesday morning, most of this precipitation will not be accounted for until next week’s U.S. Drought Monitor update. Temperatures generally ranged from 5-15 degrees warmer than usual in the Great Plains, with locally warmer readings in the Dakotas and eastern Montana. With some exceptions, temperatures mainly were within 5 degrees of normal across the rest of the Contiguous U.S.
The West
Precipitation fell across higher elevations of California, northern Idaho, and the western areas of Oregon and Washington this week.
Drier weather occurred elsewhere. Temperatures were warmer than normal in most of the West, with the warmest conditions, 9-15 degrees above normal, occurring in Montana’s central and eastern plains. Recent improvements to snowpack in northeast Nevada, Idaho and southwest Montana led to localized improvements to drought conditions.
Meanwhile, to the south across Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, this week’s continued dry weather led to widespread drought degradation as short- and long-term precipitation deficits grew amid soil moisture, streamflow and groundwater deficits. Drought conditions are especially bad from Phoenix westward to far southeast California, where exceptional drought developed this week.
The High Plains
Temperatures across most of the High Plains were above normal, with most locations east of the Rocky Mountains finishing the week between 9 and 15 degrees warmer than normal.
Some precipitation fell in the mountainous areas of Colorado and Wyoming, and snow occurred Monday night into Tuesday morning in parts of the northeast Colorado plains into western and central Nebraska. Most of the High Plains region east of the Rocky Mountains did not see any changes to ongoing drought or abnormal dryness, except for southern Kansas, where abnormal dryness expanded in response to unusually dry weather in the last few months. In western Colorado, moderate and severe drought expanded in coverage due to very low snowpack and growing precipitation deficits. Recent precipitation in west-central Wyoming led to localized improvements to drought conditions there.
The South
Temperatures across the South this week were mostly warmer than normal, with much of Texas and Oklahoma finishing the week 6-10 degrees above normal.
A line of thunderstorms associated with this week’s powerful low-pressure systems produced widespread rain of 0.5-1 inches in central and western Oklahoma and central north Texas, though areas east of there did not receive precipitation from this storm system until after the Tuesday morning data cutoff. Scattered drought degradations occurred in the western halves of Texas and Oklahoma due to increasing precipitation deficits and locally decreasing streamflow and soil moisture. Groundwater and reservoir levels continued to drop in central Texas in the San Antonio area amid very large precipitation deficits, leading to the development of a small area of exceptional drought. Similar conditions in southwest Texas led to the expansion of exceptional drought along the Rio Grande to the El Paso area. — UNL Drought Monitor
