Some rain over the past week has helped the look on the Drought Monitor, and to take a look at that, talking with Corey Davis from the State Climate Office of North Carolina, right now, how much improvement have we seen over the last week or so, Corey?
“Well, Mike, over the last 10 days, we’ve had a couple of solid precipitation events, and those were reflected on the US Drought Monitor map this week. One of those events was last Wednesday. That’s when we had that strong cold front come through and brought some severe thunderstorms, but also brought a pretty solid covering of about an inch of rain across North and South Carolina. The other event that we saw was back on Monday of this week that was probably the more productive of the two events we saw parts of southeastern North Carolina and eastern South Carolina that picked up two, three, even four inches in some spots. So that’s the most rain that those areas that had in several months. So last week, we had seen some degradation on the drought map. We had seen an expansion of severe drought in parts of southeastern North Carolina, including in the sand hills and northeastern South Carolina, and those changes were largely reverted this week. We’re back to only a few smaller patches of severe drought right along the coast, still looking at a pretty solid covering of moderate drought, especially across southeastern North Carolina and a good chunk of South Carolina. So this was not a drought buster event. When we look at those precipitation deficits since the start of the winter, we’re still five to eight inches below normal in most areas. So it’ll take more rain to break us all the way out of this drought. But that was definitely a good start just over the past week.
Speaking of more rain, I think there may be some of the forecast. We’ll get to that in just a minute, but your office has just put out its winter recap, and people may be wondering, we’re not quite out of winter yet, but we are out of climatological winter, aren’t we?
“You said it, Mike. Yeah, December, January, and February. That’s our climatological winter season. We do that both because of convenience. It lines up well with the calendar, but also because those three months tend to feel more similar weather wise. Now, when we look at our temperatures over the winter, we can say that there was nothing consistent from month to month. We were near our normal temperatures in December. We were very cold for most of January, and of course, that’s when we saw some of that snow. And then for the most part, we were on the warm side of February. So when you average out those three months, ended up coming out to a route about normal in North and South Carolina, just slightly warmer than normal for that three month period in both states. Now, it was a lot more one sided in terms of precipitation. We know we’ve been in that dry pattern over the past few months, and ended up ranking as the 16th driest winter on record in South Carolina, dating back to 1895 and the 21st driest winter for North Carolina. So again, that’s why we’re seeing that drought on the map all across North and South Carolina. And one thing Mike that make this made this winter so unusual is that we actually saw a net drought increase during the winter. Typically, we expected to see some recovery during this time of the year, when the temperatures are cooler and when the water demands are lower. But in this case, we actually saw drought expand across the Carolinas. Coming into the winter, we had about a third of North Carolina and about 10% of South Carolina that was in drought coming out of the winter here in March, that number was up to more than 50% of North Carolina and more than 80% of South Carolina. So again, that’s the effect that that persistent dry weather pattern had on us over the season.”
With that dry weather, I know you’ve been getting some updates from extension agents across both states. What are you hearing and seeing there?
“Yeah, really, it was a combination of temperatures and precipitation that the farmers have been feeling since the end of the winter in South Carolina, we’ve heard that some of the vegetable growers have been stung by some of those freezing events just over the past month or so, especially for their vegetable crop. And that’s mainly down across the Pee Dee region, also in the low country of South Carolina, we know some of the pastures down there just were not growing as quickly as they would like. And that’s actually being reflected in some of the cattle weights. They’re not as high as they should be for this time of the year in North Carolina, one thing we’ve heard in places like wake and Harnett counties, even down in Bladen county in the southeastern part of the state, is that some of the cereal crops, the wheat, the rye, those winter crops, just have not been keeping pace like they normally would at this time of the year, but there is some good news after that rain we’ve had over the past week or so. It seems like that is helping them catch up just a little bit, and hopefully they’ll fully recover by the time they’re harvested over the next couple months.”
And that segues right into what we were talking about the forecast, and I understand there may be some more rain on the way.
“Yes, an impactful weather coming up this weekend. But first will be pretty warm temperatures in the mid to upper 70s this afternoon, maybe the low 80s tomorrow, in some spots. But then our next cold front will roll in on Sunday. This is the big weather making event that we’re watching over the next week. Some pretty good chances of rain across the Carolinas looking at at least an inch in most areas, maybe more than that locally, and especially farther west, they could stand to see two to three inches from this system. But also, just like that front that we saw come through the middle of last week, there is a severe weather potential on Sunday, especially for damaging winds, for possible isolated tornados. And if this system comes in as slowly as some of the models are showing, those rain amounts could bump up, but also that can increase the threat of flooding locally. So something to keep an eye on as we head through the weekend, that will be the big weather maker. And then by early next week, will be a little bit cooler, but back to sunny skies by Monday.”
Well, I tell you these warm temperatures that we’ve had this week really caught me by surprise. It’s a happy surprise, but wow. I mean, we’ve seen 80 degrees. I was not expecting that.
“Yeah, you know, since the middle of February, it feels like we’ve been on this temperature roller coaster. We had some of that snow in the northeastern part of the state in mid February that put us down on the cold side. We rebounded just a couple days after that, and we’re back up in the 60s and 70s. And you know now we’re in March, we’re up in the 80s, even though it is spring, by the climatology, that’s still above normal for this time of the year. 80 degree weather is something we don’t usually expect to see until later in April. So I know, especially for the farmers, they’re wondering, with all this warm weather, are we out of the woods for a freeze event? The answer is not, quite the average last freeze date across eastern North and South Carolina tends to come in late March, so we’re still at least a couple weeks away from that. And then across the central part of North Carolina, we’re looking at late March to early April for that average last freeze so as tempting as it is, when it gets this warm to start your planting, it’s good time for field work, maybe not for planting just yet.”