North Carolina assistant state climatologist Corey Davis, we certainly made up for some deficits last week in the Carolinas with those rain systems that came through. But with that dryness in April, I’m wondering as we move into the summer months right now, what kind of pattern are we moving into? And should that kind of pattern lead us to believe that we’re going to be drier or wetter than normal?
“We have not been directly under that Bermuda high pressure system so far. In fact, we’ve still had a fairly active unsettled weather pattern here through the middle of May, and looking ahead to the summer again, a little bit hard to predict exactly when and where our rainfall might happen. But it is shaping up to be a much more active tropical season overall. We talked before about how we’re expecting potentially 20 or more named storms, but there’s no guarantee any of those will affect the Carolinas. But anytime you’re throwing more storms out there, there’s a better chance that some of those may affect us. So certainly not feeling like we will be in for a widespread summer drought this year. If we do have some hot days and some weeks without any rainfall, we can see local areas slip into some drought and dryness. But again, we are in much better shape now than we were 17 years ago and not expecting a repeat of that. 2007 drought.”