Rain In The South Helps Drought Improvements

While the northern half of the US is dealing with snow storms, the south has different issues. The southeast has experienced a drought this year, but two waves of heavy rain helped improve the droughts in those areas. Although the news of the rain is a goo thing for these areas in the south, this doesn't mean the drought is over. 

Many areas of the South saw drought conditions improve by at least one category from western North Carolina through Tennessee and into Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and the Florida Panhandle.

There are four drought categories on the U.S. Drought Monitor, ranging from moderate (lowest drought category) to severe, extreme and exceptional (highest category).

Parts of Georgia and Alabama also saw some improvement, but rainfall was not as heavy in many locations, which did not bring a reduction in drought categories.

The picture below shows where the droughts have been the most severe this year: 

The area outlined in black in the above map generally marks where extreme or worse drought conditions were in place at the beginning of last week. As you can see, much of that area has seen a reduction in drought conditions due to the two rounds of rain over the last 10 days.