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.

Another searing heat wave will bake the northern Plains, northern Rockies and Great Basin into early next week before a pattern change finally eases this long-lived hot pattern over the nation’s most rapidly worsening drought in parts of the Dakotas and Montana.
(MORE: Pattern Change Next Week Will Bring Heat Relief to Northern Plains, Rockies and Heat Will Build in the East) Known as a flash drought for its relatively rapid development, this northern Plains drought developed quickly by late May over a sizable swath of eastern Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Local ranchers and farmers told KRTV-TV this is the worst drought in northeast Montana since 1988.
Fifteen North Dakota counties were designated as agricultural disaster areas at the end of June, KFYR-TV reported.
"There are some areas of western North Dakota into Montana that haven’t had good rain going on three months, other than isolated spots," Daryl Ritchison, executive director of the North Dakota Agricultural Weather System, told the Williston Herald.
Billings, Montana, topped out at 100 degrees last Saturday, a threshold the city hadn’t crossed in almost three years.
This means highs well into the 90s or low 100s are likely to persist in the northern High Plains drought area, as well as lower elevations of the northern Rockies and Great Basin, not to mention parts of the southern Canadian prairie, through early next week.
(MORE: Pattern Change Next Week Will Bring Heat Relief to Northern Plains, Rockies and Heat Will Build in the East) This pattern will squeeze the worst of the heat out of the northern Plains and northern Rockies.
There have been isolated thunderstorms in parts of the drought area even during this prolonged heat wave, mainly firing off the mountains, or when surface temperatures get so hot that thunderstorms ignite.
Again, welcomed baby steps for a region increasingly desperate for relief.

Drought conditions, recent rainfall and an unusual storm path in Maine may have contributed to the large numbers of trees that toppled during a storm that walloped the Northeast this week, officials said.
Because of dry conditions, the trees’ roots weren’t healthy, and ground conditions and foliage that remained on the trees made them more susceptible to wind, said Peter Rogers, acting director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency.
Across the Northeast, more than 440,000 people were still without power Wednesday.
And the winds were exceptionally powerful, with four times the force of a common wind storm, he said.
Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, has ordered a review of National Grid’s response to a storm that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people in New England.
Nearly 30,000 people still were without power in Rhode Island on Wednesday.
The scope of the damage in Maine made comparisons to the 1998 ice storm inevitable.
Roger Pomerleau turned his business into a makeshift shelter after the ice storm, allowing employees of his home furnishings store to use the washing machines and refrigerators while their homes were without power.
"The temperature is in our favor right now.
Those were cold temperatures back then," Pomerleau said.

I have lived my whole life in San Juan County, and, as a fifth-generation rancher, I know the meaning of hard work, grit and determination.
It has been a struggle to provide for my family at times, due to the strict and cumbersome regulations involving grazing permits on land around the county and the water rights within the county.
I’m not alone on this matter.
Now, as we are in the worst drought that I have ever experienced, that situation has grown even more dire.
Agricultural industry is the lifeblood of our economy; it is the main source of income for many individuals, and everyone in our community is affected when a drought or similar natural disaster hits.
As this drought continues to starve our cattle and wither our crops, we have decided to fight back.
We want to be able to work and provide for our families.
Since we are a small rural community, we have often felt left behind in many respects, namely not having adequate resources and personnel to deal with these types of issues.
We hope through these efforts that the appropriate resources will be directed to help our community and we can help save the livelihoods of many citizens in San Juan County.
Bruce Adams is a San Juan County commissioner, fifth-generation rancher and a devoted voice for agriculture, lands and community unity.

Originally published on Planetsave.
Two major drought indices in Europe are deviating from each other in a way that’s consistent with many climate change simulations — further gaining ground in the march towards the attribution of major events like droughts to climate change — according to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Image via NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory “This is one more big drop in the bucket toward climate change attribution,” commented lead author James Stagge of Utah State University’s Utah Water Research Lab.
“There have been a lot of projections, but now that we’re starting to see the projections and observations line up, it’s not a question of ‘is it happening?’ It’s a question of ‘how much?’ And ‘what do we do?
‘” The observations by the researchers match earlier work predicting that drought frequency would decrease in Northern Europe and increase in Southern Europe as the result of climate change.
Speaking about the effect of evapotranspiration on drought occurrence, Stagge stated: “When you include evapotranspiration, the border from where it’s getting wetter to where it’s getting drier is pushing farther and farther north.
In a stationary climate, Stagge and co-authors say they would expect this difference to be randomly distributed and stable like it was from the 1950s through the 1970s.
‘This recent and consistently increasing trend is a clear signal, not random noise,’ he added.
“Stagge says the new findings are important to the scientific community and could influence public policy and Europe’s agriculture industries.
And in the short term, extreme heat waves like the recent “Lucifer” heat wave will be becoming much more common.

Should we not expect it given Cape Town’s climate?
Will every future year look like this one?
Can we consider the last three years to be an expression of a trend and extrapolate it into the future like so: Or should we assume that Cape Town’s climate has changed and from now on we will have only dry years, like 2017: Is The New Normal going to be one of the above?
In summer, the cold fronts still occur, but they are located well to the south of Cape Town, and rain over the ocean.
We don’t just have high rainfall years, and low rainfall years.
We can’t predict how they will change over the next year but we can observe and predict long-term changes to the average positioning of high pressure systems and the westerly wind belts.
If so, then in the next years we will still see year-to-year variability in rainfall, perhaps with the mean trending towards a lower (near zero?)
In the figures, yellow dots mark years that have rainfall of magnitude corresponding to that recorded in Cape Town in 2017, i.e. years of drought.
In some projections there are many years of drought.
Their research covers various aspects of climate – from climate change, climate variability and seasonal forecast to consequences of climate events and communicating climate information.

Frequent rain to limit summer heat from northern Argentina through central Brazil As northeastern Brazil faces a worsening drought, much of the country is forecast to receive plenty of rain and thunderstorms throughout the season.
The widespread rain will also help to limit extreme heat from building across the region.
A few heat waves are still possible, but they are expected to be brief before the rains return.
Rounds of rain will also help to reduce drought concerns across Colombia and Venezuela, countries that have faced extreme drought in recent years.
This includes Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and Lima, the capital of Peru.
Summer heat to scorch Chile, Argentina Some of the hottest weather across South America this summer will focus on Chile and Argentina as hot and dry conditions prevail across the region.
Heat waves will be common across the region, including in Santiago, Chile, and Córdoba, Argentina.
“The summer is usually the driest part of the year for much of Chile and central and southern Argentina, so we are not expecting much rain, if any, in these areas,” Nicholls said.
Last summer, high demands for electricity during heat waves led to power cuts in Argentina.
“Far southern parts of Chile and Argentina can have some rain on occasion, especially later in the summer,” Nicholls said.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Drought conditions across much of Maine may have contributed to the large numbers of trees that toppled during a storm that walloped the Northeast this week, officials said.
It left more Mainers in the dark than even the infamous 1998 ice storm, but the long-term effects will likely be much different.
Because of dry conditions, the trees’ roots weren’t healthy, and ground conditions along with foliage that remained on the trees made them more susceptible to wind, said Peter Rogers, acting director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency.
"It was kind of a perfect storm," Rogers said.
He had declared a state of emergency on Monday, the day the storm peaked during the early morning hours.
Maine’s two major utilities were still reporting more than 200,000 customers without power early Wednesday morning.
Other states in the Northeast are also still cleaning up from the storm.
All 16 Maine counties were declared federal disaster areas.
"The temperature is in our favor right now.
Those were cold temperatures back then," Pomerleau said.

The recent rain deficit across South Carolina continues to compound early drought conditions across portions of the Midlands and Upstate.
The U.S. Drought Monitor continues to list Aiken, Saluda, Newberry, Fairfield, Kershaw, Lee, Lexington, Richland and Sumter Counties in the first stage of drought, known as A0: Abnormally Dry.
A0 is the lowest stage of drought on the scale which goes up to A4: Exceptional Drought.
The next stage of drought would be A1: Moderate Drought.
Perhaps a sign of things to come is that central North Carolina recently rose to the Moderate Drought status.
In South Carolina, the Drought Response Committee meets to establish which stage of drought is currently impacting specific counties in the the state.
The last meeting, which took place in mid August, included Saluda, Newberry and Fairfield Counties in the first stage of drought.
"If we continue to see little rain across the area, that would compound these early stages of drought," says SkyWACH Meteorologist Justin Kier.
"We really could use some rain or we may see fire and agricultural impacts down the road this winter and spring."
Wildfires feed on dry forest fuels, like pine straw, to continue moving across an area.

DICKINSON, N.D. — The crew at Stockmen’s Livestock Exchange tossed out bags of sawdust after the first few groups of calves went through the ring at the Stockmen’s West barn.
By the time the Tuesday, Oct. 24, sale was over, the barn had sold 3,755 calves.
It’s a similar story to the west, at Miles City Livestock Exchange in Miles City, Mont., and to the east, at Kist Livestock in Mandan, N.D. Due to drought conditions that limited feed supplies, big runs of calves have started weeks to months earlier than normal.
The Drought Monitor showed 5.92 percent of South Dakota in extreme drought, 12.72 in severe drought, 30.42 percent in moderate drought and 24.09 percent abnormally dry.
Schnell said Stockmen’s Livestock Exchange has been busy since dry conditions started.
This is the normal time of year for calf marketing, but the big sales have started earlier than normal.
Schnell said producers are selling down until they get to the number of cattle for which they have feed.
The Monday, Oct. 23 cow sale had 900 cows, which Lachenmeier said was probably 300 to 350 more cows than would sell in a normal year at the same time.
"It seems like when guys sell their calves, the next week we see their cows," he said.
Maged, said there’s "a little higher percentage" of cull cows being sold in Miles City, but most producers are holding onto as many cattle as they can.