This week’s Drought Monitor map shows that nearly half of Georgia is now covered by abnormally dry (D0) conditions, while D0 conditions expanded slightly in South Carolina and were reintroduced into Alabama. Overall the areal coverage across the Southeast almost tripled in size. It’s not clear how long this will last, however, since we expect wet conditions to return this week and bring an inch or more of rain to the area that is affected by the dry conditions. The rain may not occur before the Tuesday cut-off of data for the next map, however, so they could still be present on next week’s map.