Good Thursday afternoon, the drought index has been updated for this week and for the first time in a while parts of Western North Carolina have been placed in the abnormally dry category (D0) of drought conditions.
In our coverage area, Alexander and Caldwell Counties are a part of the “abnormally dry” area. Other towns and cities like Asheville, Waynesville, Cherokee, Murphy, Boone, Wilkesboro and Jefferson are also a part of the drought.
A more extensive drought is located across sections of Eastern North Carolina where conditions have been dry going back to the winter.
Taking a look at precipitation anomalies over the past 30 days you can see that our entire coverage area has been below normal. Along the Blue Ridge escarpment the amounts have been a half inch or less below normal but further east like in Taylorsville it’s been more in the 2+ inch range.
We are at that time of the year where rain chances become scattered in nature. Unless we have some tropical feature or an anomalous upper low/trough’s to our west, widespread rain chances are going to be hard to find.
The encouraging news is that we do have a front that will move into the Carolinas this weekend and potentially get hung up going into early next week. Fingers are crossed that we can get decent storm coverage to help at least negate the drought and keep it from getting worse.
