The latest Drought Monitor, released earlier this week, shows that the high temperatures combined with limited rainfall in most areas led to an increase in abnormally dry (D0) and drought conditions in parts of the region this past week. A large area of abnormally dry conditions formed in Virginia with smaller increases in other states where some D0 was already present. There was improvement in the dry conditions in South Carolina and in Southern Florida. I expect to see drastic decreases in drought in South Florida on the next map, which covers most of the period of very extensive heavy rains that fell across the region in the middle of last week after the cutoff time for the map below. However, the hot and dry conditions in the next week (see today’s other post) are likely to cause continued expansion of drought in most areas of the Southeast on next week’s map.

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