We don’t have to worry about any dry spots in most places, especially after the rains we got this past week. Let’s get the update from assistant state climatologist Corey Davis of the State Climate Office of North Carolina and wow, we really had some big rain events. What was that all about?
“Well, Mike, sometimes it feels like all it takes is just turning the page on the calendar to kind of reset our weather pattern. If you remember back in April, we had only about an inch of rain in some spots like Raleigh in Greenville, North Carolina, only about half an inch up in Elizabeth City. So we had been stuck in that fairly dry pattern without any real weather systems moving through for most of April, and we get into the first weekend of May, and suddenly we start to see all the rain that we could hope for in most spots. There was a pretty slow moving cold front that moved in beginning last Friday (and) really stayed with us until Monday. So all across the state we saw at least a little bit of rain and across central and western North Carolina and a good chunk of South Carolina. We had some pretty heavy totals, some areas saw two four inches of rain just from that one weekend.”
We don’t have any areas that are actually considered in drought at this point in North or South Carolina, do we?
“We don’t, Mike, and just very briefly coming into the spring we had a few dry spots developing in parts of US central and eastern North Carolina, especially getting out toward the Goldsboro area. You know that drought was pretty short lived, because if you remember in March, that was a pretty wet month. We saw enough rain in March to get rid of that drought and any early season impacts that it was having. So we did have that pretty widespread abnormal dryness on the map. Thanks to the rain last week, a lot of that has now gone but again, still seeing some of those abnormally dry areas not getting back into drought yet. But again, just a reminder that those places are still in a bit of a precipitation deficit over the past couple of months.”