The latest Drought Monitor, released today, shows that the area covered by drought increased in Alabama, Florida, and Virginia but had only slight changes in the other states of the Southeast this past week. Dry conditions since then may result in further increases in dryness in next week’s map except in areas that could be affected by soon-to-be Ophelia, a tropical storm that is expected to form off the East Coast and make landfall somewhere in North Carolina in the next few days. In Puerto Rico, the area of drought did not change but abnormally dry conditions expanded to cover almost half of the island.
