The State Climate Office of North Carolina has a blog on a variety of topics related to climate in the Southeast.  Today’s entry describes some research that their students are doing on the measurement of drought.  One of the new products under development is a Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) which will include the impacts of both precipitation and evapotranspiration in the drought calculations.  You can read the article at https://nc-climate.ncsu.edu/climateblog?id=147&h=5666e5c1.

The post also provides a link to an experimental high-resolution drought trigger tool which will break down drought into sub-county levels.  You can try this out at https://nc-climate.ncsu.edu/drought.

Source: State Climate office of North Carolina
Source: State Climate office of North Carolina