It has been raining at my house on and off all day and showers have occurred almost every day this past week. The outlook for the next week looks like more of the same, with daily afternoon and evening thunderstorms likely through next weekend. Several inches could occur in many places, leading to a significant dent in the drought, although it will take a while to eliminate all the deficit, and heavy rain does not help much because a lot of the water just drains into streams and reservoirs rather than replenishing the soil at deeper levels. Cooler temperatures due to the cloud cover will also decrease evaporation. You can get 1-7 day QPF forecasts at https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/qpf/day1-7.shtml.
This is good news for farmers, but I know you are wondering when you can get back into the fields, especially if you were directly hit by the heaviest rain showers. It looks to me like after next weekend’s rain, things should dry out for a few days, which should give producers time to get into the fields to do needed work. Rain beyond that looks like it will be scattered and lighter, so that should also help.
The tropics do not look like they will be a contributing factor for the next couple of weeks, although I have seen some misleading posts on social media hyping a tropical storm that is predicted to form in the Gulf by the GFS model way at the end of its forecast period 354 hours out. The GFS model is known for pumping out spurious storms this time of year, so you should not trust it or anyone who posts about it on social media. When it looks like a possibility, the National Hurricane Center and other reliable sources online will start mentioning it, but now is way too early to be concerned.
