Drought improvement - can we keep this going?

The rainfall in March has done wonders for easing drought, but it hasn't entirely erased it yet. Big rains from the previous weekend (March storm #2) provided some 3-4"+ amounts for northwest Kansas, and that was enough to drop a category of drought. 

In the last 30 days, we still have areas that haven't had very much rain. You'll notice a pocket in central Kansas near Ellsworth, Lyons, and Salina that's only had about 1-1.5" of moisture. The far southwest is another pocket of lower rain totals. 

Drought monitor from one week ago:

Latest map (released Thursday - rainfall taken into account does NOT include Tue/Wed moisture)

Next storm arrives Sunday night/Monday:

This won't be the strongest system that we've seen this month, but it does look to provide more widespread rainfall for the area. It is unlikely there will be severe thunderstorms, but we will have some thunder in the area heading into Monday. The system could slow down a bit as it crosses Kansas, so we may end up with some 1" rains in areas. Western Kansas may be on the lower end of the totals (closer to .50"), but it will still help.

Severe weather climatology:

It was a rough week with tornadoes and damage in Alabama and Mississippi back on Wednesday. It is certainly not uncommon this time of year to have severe storms and tornadoes in that part of the country. Severe weather season start there and then spreads back to the west as temperatures warm and the upper level winds begin to shift back northward. The graphic below shows where tornadoes are "more likely" in mid-March.

 

Mid-April, it spreads back to the west and north.

You can look back at the previous blog post earlier this week and see that near or above normal rains should continue for several more weeks. There are plenty of indicators pointing toward active weather right into April, so if you are needing rain (or planting, or putting fertilizer on), this is good news.