{"id":4069,"date":"2015-08-19T15:56:28","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T19:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=4069"},"modified":"2015-08-19T22:55:23","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T02:55:23","slug":"flash-drought-in-southern-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2015\/08\/flash-drought-in-southern-us\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Flash drought&#8221; in south central US"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>USA Today<\/em> published an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/weather\/2015\/08\/17\/flash-drought-scorches-southern-us\/31863587\/\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> yesterday looking at the &#8220;flash&#8221; drought that is currently occurring in the southern US. \u00a0If you&#8217;ve never heard of the term &#8220;flash drought&#8221;, then you should know this is a term climatologists use for a drought which comes on very quickly and shows almost immediate impacts to crops and livestock. \u00a0Flash droughts are most likely to occur when temperatures are high and we go through a dry spell, since the heat and lack of rainfall can quickly degrade soil moisture and stress crops during critical growing periods.<\/p>\n<p>The worst parts of the drought are occurring in Texas. \u00a0The radar estimated precipitation for the last 30 days is shown below. \u00a0The area of blue and white is where little to no rain has fallen in the past month. \u00a0At the same time, the temperature departures in the area are 4-6 degrees above normal. \u00a0Temperatures are higher in part because there are few clouds in the dry area due to lack of moisture. \u00a0Temperatures also tend to be higher with dry soils because all of the sun&#8217;s energy goes into heating the soil rather than evaporating the water.<\/p>\n<p>The dry conditions are in part a response to the current strong El Nino, which tends to cause late summer dryness in the southern US. \u00a0Fortunately, it also tends to cause wetter and cooler conditions than normal in the winter months, so some long-term relief is in sight. \u00a0Whether that comes soon enough to help the farmers is still a big question.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/radar-30-day-rainfall-south-8-19-2015.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-4070\" src=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/radar-30-day-rainfall-south-8-19-2015-300x192.jpg\" alt=\"radar 30 day rainfall south 8-19-2015\" width=\"417\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/radar-30-day-rainfall-south-8-19-2015-300x192.jpg 300w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/radar-30-day-rainfall-south-8-19-2015-216x138.jpg 216w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/radar-30-day-rainfall-south-8-19-2015.jpg 869w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px\" \/><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/temp-departure-30-day-8-19-2015.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-4071\" src=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/temp-departure-30-day-8-19-2015-300x232.png\" alt=\"temp departure 30 day 8-19-2015\" width=\"391\" height=\"303\" srcset=\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/temp-departure-30-day-8-19-2015-300x232.png 300w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/temp-departure-30-day-8-19-2015-179x138.png 179w, https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/files\/2015\/08\/temp-departure-30-day-8-19-2015.png 688w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 391px) 100vw, 391px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>USA Today published an article yesterday looking at the &#8220;flash&#8221; drought that is currently occurring in the southern US. \u00a0If you&#8217;ve never heard of the term &#8220;flash drought&#8221;, then you should know this is a term climatologists use for a drought which comes on very quickly and shows almost immediate impacts to crops and livestock. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":4070,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16,9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news","category-climate-science","category-climate-summaries","category-drought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4069"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4080,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4069\/revisions\/4080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}