Southern Kentucky Drought Update

The U.S. Drought Monitor released their latest outlook yesterday, and there is some good news for southern Kentucky. The area of moderate drought has decreased some, but portions of Warren county and all of Butler county are still in a moderate drought.

The area of moderate drought is affecting 12.29% of the state, which is a 7.09% decrease from last week’s coverage of 19.38%. Additionally, 37.56% of the state is considered at least abnormally dry which is a 7.08% decrease from last week’s coverage of 44.64% .

It may seem odd that we are still in a moderate drought even though 4.6″ of rain has been observed at the Bowling Green Airport in the past 8 days. Taking a look at radar estimated rainfall totals shines some light on the reason for this.

The top map illustrates rainfall over the past week, and most of the state saw some beneficial rainfall. However, if you go back 90 days, Warren and Butler counties are still below normal on rainfall. On the second map, the large area of yellow and orange in southwest Kentucky indicates areas that are anywhere from 2-8″ below normal.

While the rainfall over the past week has certainly helped the drought situation, we are going to need more precipitation to continue eating away at this drought. Also, some of the rainfall we received occurred during some flash flood events. When rainfall comes down very hard in a short period of time like that, much of the rain runs off instead of soaking into the ground.

As of August 11, our soil moisture continues to run low. 56% of the state is seeing topsoil short or very of moisture and Kentucky still has the driest soil east of the Mississippi River.

Luckily, rain chances return to the forecast this weekend and early next week. Check out the WPC’s 7-day rainfall forecast which predicts around 1.5″ of rainfall through next Friday.

Lets hope showers and storms keep chipping away at this drought. #WeNeedRain