Matt Makens

More than 92 million Americans are in abnormally dry to drought conditions which
account for more than 65 percent of the Contiguous US based on the latest
drought monitor released Thursday.

The greatest drought improvements came from parts of Texas and Colorado to
Nebraska thanks to a wet week here. 

The worst areas of degradation came from California thanks to hot, dry
conditions here.

Here we visualize where the drought changed from last week:

During the past week, wet pockets were found not only in Texas and the high
plains but from New Mexico stretching toward Maine.

The image below is the percentage of normal precipitation that fell during the
past week.

Here's the total precipitation of the past week, the heaviest of which was in
Texas:

We have seen a notable improvement in soil moisture, particularly northeastern
Colorado and Texas. Here's the latest:

However, there are a lot of growing areas and pastures behind on the season so
far and need to catch up quickly before getting too far behind. Let's see the
precipitation to come for the next week through the 13th:

Some of the wettest areas will again be parts of Colorado and Texas.

For week two we see a rough estimate of total precipitation through the 21st;
higher totals will cover much of the corn belt and northern plains:

In total, this is how the next two weeks' precipitation will compare to average.
The greens indicate wetter than average, the browns are drier than average
areas.

With a few storm systems to move through the next week to provide the moisture
estimates as shown above, temperatures will respond by being cooler than average
(blue shades on this map) in most cases during the next two weeks.

In all, we will see drought conditions continue to improve in parts of Texas,
Colorado, and the Great Lakes. However, other areas will add to their drought
status (yellow shades below) during the course of May.

This corresponds well with the MJO post we shared with you a few days ago.

Status of the MJO and potential impacts on our weatherJust as a refresher, the
MJO or Madden-Julian Oscillation is an eastward moving
disturbance of clouds, rainfall, winds, and pressure that traverses the planet
in the tropics and returns to its initial starting point in 30 to 60 days, on
average. There can be multiple MJO events within a season. So…Brian BledsoeMay
03, 2021Weather5280
[https://www.weather5280.com/2021/05/03/status-of-the-mjo-and-potential-impacts]
In case you also missed it, the new climate normals were released Tuesday. 

The 1991 to 2020 climate normals just releasedThe newest U.S. climate normals
dataset released Tuesday May 4th, 2021 shows
some interesting differences from the previous dataset from a decade ago. Becky
Bolinger [https://www.weather5280.com/author/becky-bolinger] posted a long
while ago about how the new climate normals will compare to the 198…Becky
BolingerWeather5280
[https://www.weather5280.com/2021/05/04/the-1991-to-2020-climate-normals-just-released]

Drought update & the outlook: Friday, May 7th, 2021