This is the time of year when dry spells can lead to flash droughts as plants come out of dormancy and start to really increase their water use. While I don’t see much chance of that for the Southeast anytime soon, it’s still a good practice to pay careful attention to the conditions that are occurring in your area and to submit reports about the conditions there. That information is helpful to others like the Drought Monitor authors, who rely on on-the-ground information that goes beyond weather statistics. It is helpful for you to report both on dry conditions and on wet conditions to determine a baseline of what the conditions are. Here is a handy guide for how to categorize what you are seeing into different categories of wet and dry conditions. It covers the entire US, including Alaska and Hawaii, but is broken into regions beginning with the Southeast. You can find it at https://media.cocorahs.org/docs/CM_All_Regions_Guidance.pdf.
While the guide is designed for CoCoRaHS observers, the listings of what constitutes moderately versus severely dry, for example, can really help you put what you are seeing in context. They can also help if you are submitting reports via the Drought Impact Reporter at https://droughtreporter.unl.edu/map/ or the Condition Monitoring Report at https://droughtimpacts.unl.edu/ConditionMonitoringObservations.aspx.
