Those rains we had a week or so ago really starting to kick in now on the soil moisture, and we see that on the Drought Monitor. Corey Davis is the Assistant State Climatologist for North Carolina. He joins me now, and at the time those rains were occurring, you had said that we really didn’t see an effect at that point, at least as far as the Drought Monitor was concerned. What are you seeing now?
“That’s right, Mike, last week we mentioned that, especially on Tuesday night and Wednesday of last week, we did see some pretty good rain across the Carolinas, but it was still too early to say what effect that might have on our drought. But now a week has gone by that rain has had a chance to soak into the ground. You mentioned, we’ve seen some really nice improvements in soil moisture across central and western North and South Carolina. Also seen a nice boost in some of the lake and the stream flow levels in those areas. And as a result on the drought map this week, we are now drought free, at least across the mountains in Piedmont of North Carolina and the Upstate and South Carolina. There is still some drought present on the map, mainly right along the coast in the Carolinas. These are areas that if we go back three months to the middle of September, they’ve been in that drier pattern even during Hurricane Helene, they did not see as much rain, and that drier weather has really continued on through the fall and now to the start of winter, that event that we had last week that brought three to five inches in parts of western North Carolina only brought maybe half an inch to an inch in some of those coastal areas. So still seeing drought on the map there, and that actually is having an effect on farmers in southeastern North Carolina and parts of eastern South Carolina this time of the year, they’re still trying to get some of those cover crops, some of the pastures going, getting some of that rye germinated in the fields, and there’s just not enough soil moisture in those areas to get those seeds to take.”