Well, as Charles Dickens famously wrote, “A Tale of Two Cities.” We have our own version here in the Carolinas. It’s a tale of two states. We had some rain this past week, and it’s affected one area positively, one area not so much. But we’ve got State Assistant Climatologist Corey Davis here to break it down. Tell us the tale of the two Carolinas.
“Well, Kyle, I don’t know if I’m as eloquent as Dickens was, but we can say that there has been some good news. We have seen some fairly widespread rainfall across North and South Carolina over the past week. Of course, the big event was last Thursday and Friday. That remnant moisture from Tropical Storm Arthur moved through along a cold front.
“Worth noting that just to our south and west, across parts of Alabama and Mississippi, some areas got 6 to 10 inches of rain from that system. So even though that was a fairly weak remnant storm, it still packed a lot of moisture, and we did see some of that moisture continue to move into the Carolinas.
“But if you look at the drought map that was released yesterday morning, we see one area has had some big changes, one area not so much. The bigger changes have happened on the South Carolina side, especially down along the Georgia border, right along the Savannah River. A lot of those areas are now back to just the abnormally dry category. That is technically not even a level of drought. So that means some of these areas have finally broken out of the drought that has been plaguing the Carolinas for almost a year now.
“When you look at the rainfall deficits going back to the start of 2026, places like Augusta, Georgia, are only about an inch and a half below normal. So that tells you that the rain they’ve been getting has been beneficial. They have been able to chip away at those deficits like other parts of the Carolinas have not.
“And that really takes us to North Carolina. We saw very few changes on the map this week. Now, fortunately, there were no degradations, but also we just haven’t had enough rain to see the improvements like we’ve seen in South Carolina.
“Places across the Piedmont in North Carolina, Charlotte, the Triad and Raleigh, are still running 7 to 10 inches below normal since the start of the year. Again, those are a lot more sizable deficits than what they’re seeing down on the South Carolina side.
“And even though some of these areas did have some heavy rain showers last week, we just haven’t seen the lasting improvements in these areas. For instance, up across the northern Piedmont, places that are dealing with these exceptional drought conditions, that rain was nice and it gave some of the creeks and streams a boost, but those levels have come back down. The soil moisture levels also have pretty quickly declined over those last few days. We really just need more reinforcing shots of rain to be able to see those improvements on the North Carolina side.”
All right. So what in North Carolina specifically do we need to be looking for to try to start seeing these improvements on the drought map?
“Yeah. If you just look at where we are for the month of June so far, of course, the first half of the month had basically no rain at all for some of those northern Piedmont areas like Raleigh. We’ve done a little bit better over the past week, but we’re still running an inch or so below normal for the month of June.
“I think even if we could get back to average rainfall for the month, or say going into July, that would at least help us stop the degradations and then also start chipping away at some of these extreme and exceptional drought conditions.
“If we could get another good round of tropical moisture, especially right along the Carolina coast, that would be a big help as well. And that’s where we start looking at coastal areas like Wilmington. They really didn’t see as much rain last week. They’ve only had about an inch of rain for the entire month of June so far. Those areas are starting to slip into extreme drought. So they probably need the rain worse than anybody right now, just to make sure they really can stop that degradation.”
Well, let’s take a look at the ag reports. Do we have any updates? Give some positive news to the farmers out there.
“Well, there is some positive news on the South Carolina side, and this is another reason why we’ve seen some improvements in the drought conditions there, especially looking at the pasture conditions.
“We know how rough those pastures have been over the past few months, but in South Carolina, they’re now seeing only about a quarter of their pastures in poor or very poor condition. Compare that to North Carolina, where more than half of our pastures are still in poor or very poor condition.
“So even though those pastures have been dealing with the lack of rain for months now, that shows you the benefit that even one or two decent rain events can have.
“Now, you do still see in South Carolina some of the impacts of that dryness. For instance, the cotton progress is not as far along as we would expect at this time of the year. For instance, cotton is not setting bolls at the rate that it usually does, and that is very much tied to the lack of moisture, especially in the soil.
“So again, we expect some of these crops will probably stay a little bit behind. We’re hearing reports that crops are stunted right now, and it will take more rain to help them catch up.
“And on the North Carolina side, probably the big impact right now is to the corn. Farmers all across the state are talking about really how bad of a shape the corn is in right now. We’re hearing about corn that’s tasseling, it’s yellowing, the leaves are curling, just like we had two years ago, looking at a potential 30% to 40% yield loss in the corn crop.
“And that’s all because it’s been so dry and so hot during this critical time of the year, and the corn is just not getting the moisture that it expects. So unfortunately, that’s one crop that may not rebound like some of the others because when corn misses out on the rain in June, there really are not a lot of great chances for it to recover through the growing season.”
Let’s take a look at the tropics. Last week, you said we had the remnants of Arthur come through the area. How’s the tropics looking right now, and how’s that comparing to this time last year?
“Yeah, we are seeing quiet conditions across the Atlantic right now, mostly because we are seeing more wind shear, especially across the Caribbean. That’s one of those factors that we expect, especially later in this hurricane season, will probably hold down activity.
“It’s a little bit too early yet to say that this is El Niño-related, but again, it’s that same type of pattern and a similar pattern to what we saw early in the season last year.
“And that is a good reference point with where we were at this point one year ago. We had just seen the first named storm of 2025 form in this third week of June, and then the second named storm of 2025 formed before the end of June. So that was that early flurry of activity.
“We thought we may see the same thing this year. Certainly, you could call Arthur a fairly early-forming storm as well. But really, we’ll have to wait until we get into July to see how this season continues to progress and whether Arthur was just the start of a trend and more activity early on, or really one of the only storms that we’ll see before we get into the middle of summer.”
Let’s take a look at the forecast. As we’ve got the Fourth of July coming up, are we going to see any rain that might affect any cookouts around the Carolinas, or is it going to be a hot one heading into that holiday weekend?
“Well, we’ll start with this weekend, the final weekend of June, and it is definitely going to be a hot one coming up. Those temperatures have been steadily rising into the 80s. Today, they’re going to be in the low to mid-90s. It looks like through the weekend, probably mid- to upper 90s, especially across eastern North and South Carolina.
“Now, we do have some chances of showers and thunderstorms, especially on Saturday and Sunday. And we will need every little bit of rain we can get because when it’s that hot, you are losing even more moisture to evaporation. So you need to recharge whatever you can.
“It looks like by the first part of next week, not quite as hot, but still low 90s by Monday. Fewer chances of rain through the first part of next week.
“And it looks like next week could be the same story as this one, building heat throughout the week, probably upper 90s by the middle of next week.
“And that early look at your Fourth of July forecast is showing potential record-high temperatures, with more than 100 degrees possible by next Saturday. Now, we can hope the forecast changes a little bit and it’s not quite that hot. But certainly, the weather pattern that we’re in right now is favoring warm temperatures and potential record highs through the first week of July.”