Summertime warmth is prevailing, and we’re not even there yet, at least on the calendar, but it sure feels like it. Corey Davis from the State Climate Office of North Carolina joins me now, and sure, we feel like we have flipped the calendar to summer, don’t we?
“That’s right, Mike, I’ll save you my bur lives impersonation. But it is beginning to look a lot like summer out there. We see that first off, in the temperatures, just over the past week to 10 days, we’ve been well up into the 80s most afternoons. We finally got a little bit of a break from that heat earlier this week, back on Sunday, we were down into the 70s, but we have quickly bounced back again mid to upper 80s over the past couple afternoons. We mentioned last week that warm trajectory that April was on. It was trending as the warmest April on record for places like Raleigh and Charlotte. Well, it is still on that warmest on record trajectory for some local sites. Once the final beta rolls in over the next couple days, we will be able to confirm that. But again, looks like Raleigh, Charlotte, even at Asheville, will have their warmest April on record and one of the top five worst Aprils on record across pretty much the rest of North and South Carolina. So definitely know we’ve seen those above normal temperatures, especially in the afternoons, but this just gives us that confirmation. You know, the other thing that’s really looked and felt a lot like summer is our precipitation pattern, and we’ve had some more organized systems, like cold fronts come through, especially out in the western part of the state. But really, places further east have just seen that hit or miss shower and thunderstorm activity, very typical for our summer months. One bit of good news this week is that places down along the southern coast and North Carolina, like Wilmington, finally saw some decent rain from their showers and storms. Seems like it’s been three or four months since Wilmington and seen even an inch of rain in a week, and they saw about an inch and a quarter last weekend. So grateful for the rain where we got it, but again, very hit or miss and a lot of other areas, so plenty of places have dried out more than they’ve moistened up in the past week.”
Those places that are drying out, where are the areas you’re seeing the real hot spots right now, where the drought is the most severe?
“Yeah, we’ve still got some moderate and severe drought on the US. Drought Monitor up and down the coast in North and South Carolina, we actually saw a little bit of expansion of that severe drought down in the Charleston area this week, and still seeing that severe drought really everywhere from Wilmington up through New Bern and getting into the Plymouth area in northeastern North Carolina, also in the central part of North Carolina, some expansion of the moderate drought this week just south of the triad, just west of the triangle, beginning into places like Lexington and Asheboro now, just reflecting the deficits that they’ve been in over the past couple months since the start of the spring, and just not seeing a whole lot of rain here over the past two to three weeks.”
Are we starting to see a repeat of 2024 right now? Because we went through this then as well, and resulted in some pretty bad drought.
“You know, we heard exactly that from a lot of the farm reports this past week on our drought call in North Carolina. It sounds like it’s setting up very similar to last spring, where we were in pretty good shape. Coming into April, a lot of the farmers got some early planting done, but that planting slowed by the end of April, as we had spent several weeks in this dryer pattern. If you look at things like the top soil moisture content, we definitely see that dryness reflected there. About a third of the top soil in South Carolina has moisture rated as short or very short, and almost half. 48% of the top soil moisture in North Carolina is short or very short. Those numbers just on the rise week after week, as most areas are missing out. So I know that is on the minds of a lot of farmers. ‘Are we going to see a repeat of last year?’ And I know they’re especially worried about what happened early last summer. Once we got into June, we got into that extremely hot, extremely dry pattern, really just fried the corn crop. The good news is we don’t see it that sort of drought on the horizon. If anything, it looks like the middle and end of May maybe a little bit wetter than normal. So we’ll hope that we get some good rains here over the next few weeks and month, re moisten some of those soils and let some of the farmers get back out in the fields and get that planting going again.”
All right, so that’s what we need. What does the forecast tell us for now?
“Well, we won’t see widespread rain over the next week, but we are looking at least more of those showers and thunderstorms, and they will be on the increase as we head from Friday night into Saturday there’s a cold front that’s coming in from the west. It’ll approach by Saturday afternoon, and that’ll bring our best chance of rain and storms over the next week. Most areas will probably see around half an inch, maybe upwards of an inch, from some of those storms. That’ll also drop our temperatures back we mentioned we’ve been up in the 80s over the last few days. By Sunday afternoon, we’ll be down into the mid-70s, and it looks like those slightly cooler temperatures will stay with us into early next week. The big question mark in the forecast is what happens with our precipitation as we get into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of next week? There’s been some suggestion on some of the models that we might see, uh, systems stall out over us, or just to our east, that could bring a little bit more shower activity as we head into early next week, but again, still looking at Saturday as being the wettest day. So if you’ve got those outdoor plants, maybe bring that umbrella, or maybe have a shelter nearby so that you can dodge some of those showers.”
I’m looking forward to taking in some baseball this weekend, so hopefully we’ll be able to dodge some of that (and) walk between rain drops. Hey, let me ask you this. Speaking of weather, let’s talk about Hurricanes, specifically the Carolina Hurricanes, who took care of business in their first round series on Tuesday night. Congratulations!
“Mike, this is one of those weather trends that I love talking about, especially with the way that game played out on Tuesday. It wasn’t a great start. The Hurricanes got down three nothing in the first period. But this is a team that’s shown for the last few years that they are not afraid of a deficit. They’re not afraid of fighting back, and that’s exactly what they did. They tied it up by the second took them all the way until the second overtime to win the game and clinch the series, but a really solid five-game first-round series against the Devils and now they get a chance to rest up this weekend. Don’t know if they’re going to be spending too much time outside, but definitely be preparing for their next opponent.”
Well, way to go, Hurricanes! That’s the kind of Hurricane season we really like, and we hope that season continues to get extended for several more weeks, and maybe more than a month.