AUSTIN, Texas — The U.S. Drought Monitor is a nationwide map that tracks ever-changing growth and easement of drought conditions throughout the country.
Here in Central Texas, especially across our south and west counties, exceptional and extreme drought has been an issue since this time last year. In the past few months, there has been some change, but rain events have been too few and too far between to make a drastic difference – until last week.
Last Thursday and Friday, a 48-hour-long washout left select neighborhoods in Austin with over 5 inches of rain. In just two short days, the Austin airport and Camp Mabry beat April's average monthly rainfall by almost an inch.
Here is a look at those totals across the KVUE viewing area, recorded by the Lower Colorado River Authority.
When you superimpose our most current Drought Monitor over last week's rainfall totals, it's easy to see that most of that beneficial rain favored the east side of the region, where the drought has lessened over the past few months.
It seems the region of exceptional to extreme drought only received 1-2 inches of rain at most.
According to NOAA's Drought Termination and Amelioration sector, in order for the drought problem to be significantly eased within one month's time, we would need about 5 inches of rain.
That 4-5 inches of rainfall would need to double up to 10 inches to put an end to the drought come May 1.
As for Thursday's drought update, the 2-4 inches of rain or more across Interstate 35 and extending eastward should put counties like Milam, Lee, Bastrop, Fayette, Travis, Caldwell and Williamson in a much better category. Some counties could even switch over to the "none" category; however, the majority of counties could remain in the "abnormally dry" or "moderate drought" category.
As for the southern and western counties, Hays, Blanco and Gillespie are still lacking sufficient moisture. There will likely be no major changes to that side of the drought map.