In the mountains of drought-stricken areas of Colorado and New Mexico, the cool-season is off to a positive start in portions of the central and southern Rockies where snow shower activity continued this week.
In the Southeast, widespread rain shower activity helped alleviate areas of dryness in Alabama and Georgia while short-term precipitation deficits led to expansion of drought in portions of Florida.
Elsewhere in the region, light-to-moderate rainfall accumulations (1-to-4 inches) were observed in coastal areas of the region leading to removal of an area of Abnormally Dry (D0) in the Mid-Coast of Maine.
Southeast On this week’s map, widespread shower activity improved conditions leading to removal of areas of Abnormally Dry (D0) in northern Alabama and eastern Georgia as well as removal of a small area of Moderate Drought (D1) in northeastern Georgia.
In Florida, below-normal soil moisture levels and precipitation deficits during the past 60 days led to expansion of areas of Abnormally Dry (D0) in southern and eastern portions of the state as well as the introduction of Moderate Drought (D1) in east-central Florida where 7-day average streamflows were well below normal.
Average temperatures across northern portions of the region were 1-to-6 degrees below normal while southern portions, including southern Georgia and Florida, were 3-to-9 degrees above normal for the week.
South On this week’s map, only minor improvements were made in the region including removal of remaining areas of Abnormally Dry (D0) in northeastern and southwestern Mississippi where heavy rains this week erased existing short-term precipitation deficits.
High Plains On this week’s map, improvements were made in North Dakota with the removal of two areas of Severe Drought (D2) in response to normal to above-normal precipitation during the past 30-to-60 days.
Continued dry conditions in California led to expansion of an areas of Moderate Drought (D1) in the Sacramento Valley, extending to the western foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada.
Average temperatures were below-normal across most of the region during the past week.

Producers in central west NSW will experience a tough couple of decades of dry conditions, with a report revealing severe droughts are expected to become more frequent.
Climate change is making drought worse, Climate Councillor Professor Will Steffen said.
“With the momentum of past emissions we can’t stop these trends, they’ll continue for a couple of decades.
So you’re looking at continuing drier than normal conditions in southern Australia out to about 2040 or so,” Professor Steffen said.
In the central west, 85 per cent of the region was in drought, while 7 per cent was in intense drought and 8 per cent was drought affected.
The report found transitioning electricity systems to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which have minimal water requirements, can reduce overall water consumption, as well as reducing the risks to electricity generation associated with droughts, heatwaves and flooding.
“So you have a double whammy there, that you’ve got a long term effect of climate change making droughts worse and when you do get the natural variability like an El Nino that just makes it even worse.. the immediate prognosis over the next six months is not very good.” Professor Steffen said farmers need to be aware that it is likely Australia will have dry conditions over the next several months.
Across the Murray-Darling Basin, streamflows have declined by 41 percent since the mid-1990s, the report found.
“We’ve been saying this in the scientific community for quite a while now that there are huge risks with climate change,” he said.
“People don’t understand that we rely on a reasonably steady climate.

She captured the moment while the pair were feeding their bulls on Sunday morning.
After posting the image on social media, the pair have been sent kind messages from their friends — who said they hoped rain was on the way.
“Heartbreaking picture so hard to take after a lifetime of hard work,” wrote one of the commenters.
“Hope it rains soon.” Ms King explained that this level drought had never been seen in the area before.
“Never seen before, first time without water.” They both live on a fourth-generation, 2000-acre cattle farm and Ms King, a farmer and army veteran, said her old man still helps with farming.
“There’s just myself and my dad,” she told Yahoo7.
Foodbank was facing the prospect of cutting services for the needy after it lost $250,000 a year when the Government redistributed the relief budget to spread funds between three providers rather than two.
“I have listened and decided to increase the Food Relief budget by $1.5 million over the next 4.5 years,” Mr Morrison announced on Twitter on Tuesday.
OzHarvest, which became the third charity to receive government support, says the redistributed funds will allow it to provide 5.6 million meals next year.
Mr Morrison has also asked Social Services Minister Paul Fletcher to place more focus on delivering food relief in drought-affected areas.

A long, hot summer is likely across Australia, but some much-needed rain is on the way for farmers in drought-affected areas of NSW.
Following a wet October, the Bureau of Meteorology says the outlook for December to February is warmer-than-average summer days and nights.
But BOM’s senior hydrologist Robert Pipunic says rain is set to bring some relief to drought-affected parts of NSW and Victoria in December.
"High pressure over the South Tasman Sea will drive more humid air inland than normal, resulting in a welcome wetter-than-usual December outlook for central and eastern NSW and eastern Victoria," Dr Pipunic said on Thursday.
The current drought has lasted more than a year with the nation sweating through its third-hottest year on record in 2017.
While buckets of rain fell across the nation in October, it wasn’t enough to break the drought in NSW and Queensland.
Warmer seas in the tropical Pacific Ocean have increased threefold the risk of an El Nino forming in the coming months, meaning lower rainfall across parts of the country.
"However, El Nino typically has a weaker influence in the current drought areas of southeastern Australia during summer than it does in winter and spring," BOM’s latest climate outlook said.
It also means an equal chance of either a wet or dry summer for the rest of the country.
Further warming of the Pacific Ocean is likely, BOM says, with the majority of climate models predicting sea surface temperatures remaining above El Nino thresholds until at least March.

But fire authorities say forceful winds and a long drought would be necessary to produce a Central Texas wildfire as devastating in as the ones currently blazing in California.
“Only out in East Texas do we see this type of force and certainly nothing close to the things they have.” The Texas Panhandle occasionally has wind-driven fires, but they also are not as forceful as in California, said Logan Scherschel, an urban-interface specialist for the Texas A&M Forest Service.
Austin firefighters more frequently have to put out fast-moving grass fires on the city’s eastern half, but the Hill Country’s forested and rolling hills are similar enough to California’s mountain forests to cause some concerns, Buck said.
The types of fuels are similar,” Buck said.
“But we just fortunately don’t get that same long drought very often nor do we get the Santa Ana winds.” In Austin, greenbelts along Lake Austin and areas to the west, such as the Jester Estates neighborhood, are similar to Northern California, Buck said.
Because of recent rains, Central Texas is not in immediate threat of fires, said Melanie Karns, the hazard mitigation coordinator for Texas A&M Forest Service.
“Thankfully, this year we’ve had a lot of rain,” Karns said.
“This is the prime time to protect homes and prevent those future fires,” Scherschel said.
If Central Texas were to see a fire too large for local fire departments, the Forest Service would provide support and resources from other departments around the state, Karns said.
The Bastrop County Complex Fire, which destroyed burned 34,000 acres and 1,660 homes in Bastrop County, remains the worst fire in Texas history and a grim reminder of fire’s destruction, Karns said.

Farmers in Zimbabwe are appealing for funds to irrigate their land, in hopes of fending off a possible drought predicted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
FAO says droughts caused by the El Nino weather pattern are recurring more often and that might affect food security.
At Mugutu farm, about 40 kilometers north of Harare, a tractor tills land ahead of the rainy season, expected any time now.
But at another farm nearby, 59-year-old Tsitsi Marjorie Makaya is focused on raising her chickens.
“We cannot do irrigation, we do not have the money to set up the irrigation system, the money to buy pipes, for electricity, we do not have the money.
We only managed to drill a borehole and that is how we water our garden.
We cannot put the whole plot under irrigation because we do not have all the necessary equipment,” Makaya said.
Sometimes they said there is not much rain and we end up having plenty of rain.
Kormawa said even smallholder irrigation schemes were improving food security and income in countries where agriculture is the backbone of the economy.
Source: VOA News

The Climate Council has released a new report linking climate change with worsening droughts, including the current one, extreme weather events such as bushfires and floods, and identifying water security as a source of grave concern.
The report, Deluge and Drought: Australia’s Water Security in a Changing Climate, stated that if the effects of climate change were left unchecked the results for the agriculture sector and beyond will be devastating.
Less water is likely to be available for agriculture, urban water supplies, and ecosystems across southern Australia Less water is likely to flow into dams in southern Australia as a result of human-driven climate change Australia’s long-term water security is dependent on action, especially the rapid phase-out of fossil fuels According to the report, the Murray-Darling Basin — known as "Australia’s food bowl" —has seen a 41 per cent reduction in "streamflows" since the mid-1990s, while water systems in Western Australia’s southwest have declined by about 50 per cent.
These grim figures were all related, the publicly-funded council found, to rainfall patterns thrown badly out of whack by climate change.
The authors cited the Australian Capital Territory "megafires" of 2003 (during which the world’s first-known "fire tornado" was observed) as an example of the disastrous one-two punch of climate change.
Also cited in the report was the 1997–2009 Millennium Drought, which the report stated "seriously affected Australia’s agricultural sector, putting a dent in our GDP and eroding the health and wellbeing of humans and natural ecosystems alike".
"The combination of drying, extreme heat and increasingly intense bushfires has damaged or destroyed several of our most valued ecosystems, including Tasmania’s World Heritage forests and alpine areas," the report said.
The report identified climate change as a "threat multiplier", with myriad knock-on effects stemming from water insecurity that extended beyond the environmental and economic all the way to social disharmony, poverty, and the prospect of future waves of "climate refugees".
In general, the report stated: "wet areas of the world are becoming wetter and dry areas drier as the climate continues to change".
An average global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius could result in an increase in extreme rain events across Australia by 11 to 30 per cent.

A convoy of trucks is on its way to southern Queensland, to deliver much-needed hay to drought-stricken farmers.
In New South Wales, almost the entire state remains drought declared, with only 0.4 of a per cent deemed to not be in drought.
In Queensland, more than 58 per cent of the state is effected.
The government’s special drought envoy Barnaby Joyce will be in Charleville for the arrival of the Rapid Relief Team.
Mr Joyce tells Chris Smith while some areas have seen rain, it hasn’t been drought-breaking.
“What the concern is now is many of the areas you should be seeing, especially down, in towards New South Wales, at their very best.
This should be the top of the season, and it’s not.
“It just needs a dry week and it’s gone.
“And in Queensland, well… it just hasn’t rained.
It hasn’t rained in some areas for seven years.” Click PLAY below to hear the full interview

Only minor portions of the region remain officially afflicted by light drought circumstances as the season heads toward Thanksgiving.
University Extension has reported that only small geographic locations of modest drought conditions linger in the southern areas of Platte and Clay counties.
“There are, however, several areas of our state still considered abnormally dry, including parts of north Missouri,” said Tim Baker, a horticulturalist based in Daviess County.
Baker said above-normal rainfall returned to Gallatin, Missouri, in August.
September saw below-normal precipitation for the city, he added, yet with some unexpected rains occurring in October.
“Our total in Gallatin was an amazing 9.56 inches,” said Baker.
“I have heard reports of even higher amounts for other locations in Daviess County.” He cautioned that while a recharge of soil moisture has been achieved to some degree, the deeper subsurface soil may remain somewhat dry in areas where drought was the greatest.
“The runoff, however, was of great benefit to our ponds, lakes and reservoirs,” Baker said.
“The city reservoirs for both Cameron and Hamilton are back to full capacity.
Hamilton reports that when it started raining again in October, within five days the water was topping the spillway.

Worse than no rain is negative rain.
“Every year we have a certain amount of rain that we expect as a result of historical patterns,” Andy Wood, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told The Daily Beast.
“Negative precipitation [comes] when you have a departure from that.” That’s exactly what happened in California this year, said Dan Mcevoy, a climate researcher at the Desert Research Institute.
Usually, he explained, a few big storms will provide enough moisture to dampen possible fuels and effectively end the fire season.
Alongside his “negative rain” tweet, Elvington posted a map showing what’s called the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI).
The EDDI is a tool developed by researchers including Wood, Hobbins, and Mcevoy.
Elvington posted that tweet just a day before the Camp fire began.
Unprecedented dryness from heat, winds, low humidity & lack of precipitation.” Not all of these environmental changes are attributable to climate change, Mcevoy noted.
But by raising global temperatures, he said, climate change is absolutely making things worse.
The Sierra Nevada—the region of California that’s battling the Camp fire—had its second-hottest summer on record in 2018.