By: Brittany Bedi | WCTV Eyewitness News TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) — North Florida remains under drought conditions.
Drier than average conditions continue.
The latest U.S. drought monitor was updater Thursday, December 14.
So far in the month of December alone, only 1.30 inches of rain was recorded at Tallahassee International Airport.
Around 1.48 inches of rain fell in Valdosta and 1.96 inches of rain reported in Albany.
The last measurable rain that fell across the area was on December 8 and 9.
Tallahassee is running 3 inches below average in rainfall this year.
Valdosta is running 9.06 inches below average and Albany is at a 7.11-inch rain deficit.
There is plenty of moisture along the Gulf Coast this week.
While that moisture will lead to more cloud cover and rain chances through most of the week, the rain will not be a drought-buster.

Precipitation levels in most major California cities are below average for this time of year.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack is just 37 percent of normal.
With no rain or snow in the immediate National Weather Service forecast, it looks like December will be “kind of a bust, for the first of our three big months of precipitation,” said State Climatologist Michael Anderson.
Thanks to a wetter-than-usual November, total precipitation in Northern California is actually close to average for this time of year.
Most of Northern California’s reservoirs, which are critical to keeping water flowing to cities and farms across the state during spring, summer and fall, are in good shape because of last winter’s record-breaking rain and snow.
Just a few of these storms, sometimes called “horizontal hurricanes,” can fill the state’s reservoirs, blanket the Sierra Nevada with snow and make the difference between a dry winter and a wet one.
A series of atmospheric rivers last winter produced the wettest season on record in Northern California, culminating with Gov.
The state Department of Water Resources’ closely-watched 8-station index, a series of gauges across the northern Sierra, has recorded 12.3 inches of rain and snow, or 94 percent of average.
“We just need more snow at lower elevations to get things going,” Royal Gorge officials said on the resort’s website.
The U.S. Forest Service this week said that an additional 27 million trees, mostly conifers such as pines and firs, have died in California since November 2016.

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) — Loss of water from the rocks of California’s Sierra Nevada caused the mountain range to grow nearly an inch (24 millimeters) in height during recent drought years from October 2011 to October 2015, a new research from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) finds.
"This suggests that the solid Earth has a greater capacity to store water than previously thought," research scientist Donald Argus of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was quoted as saying in a news release.
Significantly more water was lost from cracks and soil within fractured mountain rock during drought and gained during heavy precipitation than hydrology models show, according to the new study, detailed in a paper published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.
The team found that 10.8 cubic miles of water were lost from within fractured mountain rock in 2011-2015.
JPL water scientist Jay Famiglietti, who collaborated on the research, said the finding solves a mystery for hydrologists.
How much snowmelt percolates through fractured rock straight downward into the core of the mountain?
This is one of the key topics that we addressed in our study."
Famiglietti said the techniques developed for this study will allow scientists to begin exploring other questions about mountain groundwater.
Is there a significant amount of groundwater stored within mountains?
We just don’t have answers yet, and this study identities a set of new tools to help us get them."

Loss of water from rocks during drought caused California’s Sierra Nevada to rise nearly an inch (2.5 centimeters) in height from October 2011 to October 2015, according to a new NASA study made public Wednesday.
"This suggests that the solid Earth has a greater capacity to store water than previously thought," study leader Donald Argus of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement Wednesday.
The water at issue is inside cracks within fractured rocks and is not the water that runs off mountains to supply cities and farms.
The amount lost in 2011-2015 was 45 times the amount that Los Angeles uses in a year, according to the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.
The study used data from 1,300 Global Positioning System stations in the mountains of California, Oregon and Washington that were placed for measurement of subtle tectonic motion in active faults and volcanoes and can detect elevation changes of less than a tenth of an inch (0.3 centimeters).
"One of the major unknowns in mountain hydrology is what happens below the soil.
How much snowmelt percolates through fractured rock straight downward into the core of the mountain?"
said Jay Famiglietti, jet propulsion lab scientist who participated in the research.
"This is one of the key topics that we addressed in our study."
The researchers had to account for other reasons why the surface of the Earth rises and falls, including tectonic uplift or the extensive pumping of groundwater in the Central Valley, which runs along the Sierra.

In fact, the 21-year drought that has renewed its grip on the Southwest ranks as the longest, severe dry spell in nearly 700 years.
The near-normal winter and decent monsoon offered hope we’d finally escaped the drought, but the bone-dry autumn and prospects for a dangerously dry winter have allowed the drought to set its teeth around the throat of the Southwest once again.
The University of Arizona Tree Ring Lab has confirmed that the six-year dry stretch interrupted by snowfall in the winter of 2016-17 marked the marked the longest way-below-normal spell in 675 years.
The U of A Tree Ring Lab has an unparalleled record of such growth ring samples from throughout the region.
The records going back more than 700 years do show several periods with lower average rainfall than the past 21 years.
The so-called Medieval Warm Period lasted from about 950 to 1250, the warmest stretch since the so-called Roman Warm Period from 250 B.C.
The Medieval Warm Period was followed by the three cold periods termed the Little Ice Age in the 16th and 19th centuries.
The tree ring record does show two similar five-year dry spells, one in the 1590s and one in the 1660s.
The spring runoff in 2017 snapped the six-year losing streak, finally providing runoff a little above the long-term average, according to the Salt River Project.
Lake Mead, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam, stands at about 39 percent capacity.

"Most of the region had above-average temperatures and little to no rainfall.
The lack of precipitation continues a pattern of dryness in the region over at least the past couple of months.
Lincoln, Nebraska, has received only 0.08 inch of precipitation since Oct. 15, its driest such period on record.
Abnormally dry conditions (D0) expanded greatly over Colorado into western Kansas, and northeastward into Nebraska.
Abnormally dry conditions were expanded across the remainder of southeastern Kansas.
Moisture there is less than half of average.
Soil moisture levels are down and surface water supplies (stock ponds) are shrinking."
Central Kansas, for example, has nothing for precipitation — zero — in the DTN forecast table looking out to Dec. 28.
Follow Bryce Anderson on Twitter @BAndersonDTN
© Copyright 2017 DTN/The Progressive Farmer.

The rain of the last few days has brought some relief to parched paddocks but the week leading up to Christmas could be a trying time for some regions.
The Niwa drought monitor index highlights the Manawatu/Horowhenua/Rangitikei area as especially hard hit.
National’s Primary Industries spokesman Nathan Guy said Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor should declare a drought now, based on what the index indicated, but O’Connor said the criteria for classifying the conditions as a medium or large scale adverse event had not been met.
* Drought on the horizon for farms if no rain soon * Westpac bank helps farmers hard hit by drought But Guy said the new drought index developed by Niwa showed most of the North Island was already either in drought or headed towards severe drought without substantial rain soon.
"The drought index is a new scientific tool to help the Minister confirm when areas are in need of government support, but it is being ignored," Guy said.
It depends on the magnitude of the event and how communities are handling it," Brandolino said.
While there had been more lambs born this season, they were smaller as a result and conditions had not been great for raising them to satisfactory weights.
A lot of farmers would have got rid of their cull ewes early, sent the good lambs to the works but others have been taking a hit and selling their store lambs at quite a reduced value."
O’Connor said Ministry for Primary Industries officials were working closely with farmers and groups including the Rural Support Trust, agri-businesses and other agencies to provide help and a clear picture of what was happening.
Once a medium or large scale drought is declared, the Government provides small amounts of money to Rural Support Trusts, which organise community events, visits to banks, rural professional meetings, one-on-one support and helping with applications for rural assistance payments.

It also calls for an international plan to respond to drought conditions in Lake Mead that would include Mexico in water reductions.
At the time of Minute 323’s approval, Sen. Jeff Flake, R- Arizona, called the deal “a major step forward in guaranteeing a reliable long-term water supply by protecting Arizona’s share of the Colorado River” and said the binational deal was “setting the table for the Lower Basin Drought Contingency Plan.” That drought response plan would call on California, Nevada, Arizona, Mexico and the Bureau of Reclamation to reduce their shares of the Colorado River water in times of drought, according to Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.
“What it is really about is creating an accounting system for water forbearance,” Porter said.
“The plan creates an incentive for all the lower basin states, and the big water players to keep their water in Lake Mead, ensuring its levels.” Even though serious negotiations are ongoing, however, the draft plan is far from completion.
Another major problem facing the reservoir is the structural deficit, when more water is pulled out of the river than is recharged in the reservoir.
“It creates an incentive for all lower basin states, and fosters big water users to keep water in the lake, which provides more security for everyone.” One of the largest water consumers in Arizona are the state’s agriculture industry, which would be among the first and hardest hit by a drought contingency plan.
“We have to resolve how to absorb the impacts of some of the lowest priority parties, like the farmers whose livelihoods depend on the water,” Porter said.
“We need to have a plan to address the impacts on agriculture.” “Arizona farmers have been the most efficient with their water, more than any other state – we produce more crops now with less water than even ten years ago,” he said.
“Central Arizona Project, who represents the customers of CAP and is well-funded from Colorado River Water, or the Arizona Department of Water Resources, whose job it is to represent all of Arizona’s water interests and is significantly underfunded?” And analysts are hopeful that the confirmation last month of Brenda Burman as commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation can speed negotiations.
Burman, a former staffer for Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, has worked at the bureau and at the Salt River Project in Arizona, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Nature Conservancy, among other stops.

Despite our annual surplus in rainfall for 2017, we have now seen drought conditions quickly expand and worsen across East Texas due to a lack of rainfall over the past few months.
Even though we still have that surplus in rainfall for the year, it is the lack of timely rainfall which has led to the soil moisture content becoming depleted, leading to those drought conditions quickly building south into our part of the state.
Just three months ago, less than two percent of the state of Texas was in a drought.
As of this week, over 26% of the state is now in a drought and nearly 12% is in a stage two, severe drought.
We do have some much needed rain on the menu for this weekend, but it will not be enough to get rid of the drought.
It will keep things in check for the time being.
It should be noted that we currently have no burn bans in place in the Piney Woods.
However, you should still exercise caution and avoid doing any outdoor burning on days where the winds are up and the humidity values are low.
Copyright 2017 KTRE.
All rights reserved.

We’ll still have the occasional very wet year,” said lead scientist Ivana Cvijanovic, an atmospheric expert at Lawrence Livermore.
Bad news bears Over the next few decades, the Arctic Ocean is projected to become ice-free during the summer.
The team, which included Lawrence Livermore climate modeler Ben Santer, whose pioneering 2013 paper was the first to find patterns in the climate linked to human-caused global warming, compared two sets of simulations: one in the beginning of this century, and one looking ahead to the mid-century.
California’s rainfall will change through a two-step process, involving both the Arctic and the deep tropics, said Cvijanovic.
But when there’s a ridge, the wet and wintry Pacific storms instead slide north.
Previous research by Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh also concluded that human-caused climate change is increasing drought risk in California — boosting the odds that our recent crisis will become a fixture of the future.
“This is a really important new piece of the puzzle of how climate change can influence precipitation and drought in California,” said Diffenbaugh.
“This new paper identifies the critical role of loss of Arctic sea ice.” Daniel Swain of UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, who coined the term “Ridiculously Resilient Ridge” in December 2013 on his California Weather Blog, called the study’s link between Arctic sea ice loss and California drought “provocative, but compelling.” “While the jury’s still out regarding the specific details of where, when, and exactly how this connection may play out, it has become increasingly hard to escape the conclusion that some degree of influence is likely,” he said.
“It is not only a problem for remote Arctic communities, but could affect millions of people worldwide,” she said.
“Arctic sea ice loss could affect us, right here in California.”