The rains were quite beneficial as it fell on areas that had recently gone into moderate drought and had lingering long-term deficits going back as far as 1-2 years.
Southeast Storm totals were much less in the Southeast as compared to the Northeast, although moderate to heavy (2-4 inches) rains fell on the Appalachians – which came on top of decent rains (2-4 inches) last week.
Accordingly, D0 was removed in the central Appalachians of western Virginia, eastern West Virginia, and northeastern Tennessee.
Elsewhere, parts of eastern sections of Virginia and North Carolina measured between 1-3 inches of rain, while light to moderate (1-2 inches) precipitation was observed across Tennessee, northern Alabama, northern Georgia, extreme western South Carolina, and southern Florida.
After some improvements were made last week in the D0 areas of the Piedmont region, the only areas of deterioration were new D1 areas in south-central North Carolina and north-central South Carolina where both 60- and 90-day precipitation was between 50-70% of normal.
For now, the 90-day wetness won out over the 60-day dryness in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana due to the significant surpluses in this area at 90-days and beyond, near-normal USGS stream flows, and wet subsoil moisture – hence no D0 designation (yet).
Elsewhere, enough rain (0.5-1.5 inches) fell on eastern Louisiana, eastern Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee to prevent deterioration of conditions, but not enough to provide improvement.
In addition, the remaining areas of the southern Plains were status-quo even with this week’s dry weather due to decent rains during the past 1-2 months, although well below-normal temperatures also helped.
In contrast, greater weekly totals (0.7-1.1 inches) and surplus October precipitation allowed for improvement in north-central Ohio.
Above-normal temperatures are likely from the Four Corners region eastward to the southern and middle Atlantic regions and in western and northern Alaska while a tilt toward subnormal temperatures were found in the southeastern Alaskan Panhandle, the Far West, and across the northern thirds of the Rockies, Plains, and Midwest Author(s): David Miskus, NOAA/NWS/NCEP/CPC Dryness Categories D0 Abnormally Dry—used for areas showing dryness but not yet in drought, or for areas recovering from drought.