Levels of drought we have not seen in more than a decade. There’s the headline for you. I’m Mike Davis talking with climatologist, Corey Davis, Assistant State Climatologist for North Carolina. Corey, I was taking a look at the Drought Monitor, and I’m seeing colors that do not look good to me, and especially don’t look good to farmers.

“And Mike, it really stands out. We’ve got some red on the Drought Monitor map in eastern North and South Carolina this week. That corresponds to extreme drought. This is the d3 level, and there are only four drought categories on the Drought Monitor map. So this is not quite as bad as it gets, but it’s pretty close. Like said, these are the types of drought conditions that we haven’t seen in eastern North and South Carolina in a while. The last time parts of eastern North Carolina were in extreme drought was in August of 2011 in South Carolina. You have to go back to 2008 to find those sorts of conditions. So again, something that is really kidding at the worst possible time for the farmers out there, and the sort of drought that they are not used to dealing with, because it is such a rare event.”

And of course, we’re not telling them anything they don’t already know. They already are, you know, in the fields and seeing just how dusty and crispy things are getting now, let’s take a look at that. Where are we seeing the worst of it right now?”

“The extreme drought conditions this week in South Carolina are centered right over Florence County. They extend into northern Horry County and then into Columbus County, North Carolina. These are all places that missed out on the few showers that we did have last weekend. You know, some areas saw some pretty decent rainfall over the past week. The Greensboro area had more than two inches. But down there in southeastern North Carolina, Northeastern South Carolina, really just no rain at all over the past week. And then you go back a month to the middle of June, they have been right in the center of that hot, dry weather, and that’s why these are the first areas that we’re seeing that extreme drought develop.”

All 146 counties in North and South Carolina are in some degree right now of at least abnormally dry or worse. Is that right?

“That’s right, and we’ve seen those drought conditions expanding over the past week as well. In the southern mountains in North Carolina, we’ve now seen more widespread moderate drought develop up in the northern foothills, getting close to triad, we’re now seeing severe drought conditions, and then, like we’ve said, in southeastern North Carolina, seeing those extreme drought conditions in South Carolina, the map is really a rainbow of all the wrong colors. It’s those moderate droughts with severe drought now in the Columbia area, and then extreme drought in the far eastern part
of the state. So, you’re right, Mike, it has a wide expanding drought, and it’s getting worse by the week, unfortunately.”