Drought Map Shows Tennessee Out of the Red

The U-S Drought Monitor map released today shows the state is recovering from record dry conditions.

Rainfall in recent weeks has put Nashville at four inches above normal and is helping to end more than a year of drought conditions. As recently as early January, half the state was labeled in extreme drought.

Hydrologist James Larosa of the National Weather Service in Nashville says flooding rains in the Midwest over the past month have improved water tables and reservoirs, at least in Tennessee.

“We’ve kind of had some benefit being closer to the rainfall whereas the hardest hit areas that still remain in that extreme drought, they just haven’t been getting the rain from these storms.”

A swath through northern Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina remains in extreme drought, though the affected area continues to shrink from week to week.

See the new drought map here.