Grayson County Commissioners extended a burn ban Tuesday that was put in place Friday through a disaster declaration because of consecutive days of triple-digit heat scorching the region and the related dry conditions that elevated the risk of fires.
Much of Texoma remains in a state of moderate drought or abnormally dry, with conditions threatening to escalate into full-scale drought, the Texas Water Development Board said Monday in its weekly water update.
For Grayson County, the eastern portions of the county have been in a state of moderate drought for three weeks, while all other portions remain abnormally dry.
The burn ban prohibits the burning of any combustible material outside an enclosure designed to contain all flames and sparks.
The new ban will remain in effect through Tuesday, when the Grayson County Commissioners Court will review conditions again and decide whether to extend or end the order.
A report issued Friday by the Texas A&M Forest Service placed Grayson County among more than 140 counties across the state that had a burn ban in place.
For the month of July, one of the driest months of the year, a co-op weather station in Sherman has received just one inch of rainfall, National Weather Service Meteorologist Bianca Villanueva said Tuesday.
With the shift, Villanueva said there is a chance for rain over the weekend — albeit a small one.
This rain will also reduce temperatures even further, with Monday’s high expected to be just 91, Villanueva said.
The update saw only minor improvement in drought conditions across the state, with 46 percent of Texas affected by some form of drought.

While this week’s drought update from the National Weather Service office in St. Louis shows no dramatic change in precipitation patterns in the immediate future, there is good news with lower temperatures and less humidity in the forecast.
Mid-Thursday storms delivered 1.3 inches of rain in the Jefferson City area, but National Weather Service Hydrologist Mark Fuchs said it would take several days of that type of rain to bring the area to normal rainfall amounts for this time of the year.
“The worst of the drought has occurred in the last few weeks, starting around the beginning of June,” Fuchs said.
For the year, we’re at 15.3 inches of rain, which is down 8.3 inches from the average of 23.7 inches.” The long-term forecast is not offering much hope for significant rains, Fuchs said.
“Almost always the culprit is a big high pressure system in the southern part of the country pushing north into the Midwest, and that’s what we’ve seen,” he said.
“When you get to the 100-degree mark, like we’ve seen for much of the past couple of weeks, that causes evaporation; and this part of the country has extraordinarily high rates,” he said.
Another positive for Mid-Missouri counties along the Missouri River is river levels are where water access will not be a problem for the immediate future.
Gov.
There are at least three public water supplies in northern Missouri where much of the area is listed in “extreme” drought.
The governor’s action included a drought alert for 47 Missouri counties experiencing severe or extreme drought on the U.S. Drought Monitor.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO/KJCT)– Although we have gotten some rain in the valley recently, Mesa County has been upgraded from severe to extreme drought.
The National Weather Service says the county leveled up in the drought because of new data that becomes available every Thursday.
The new drought outlook comes from data that is updated on a weekly basis, and records information from the previous week.
Even though we have gotten some rainfall, the hot and dry conditions last week were enough to put the county in the extreme category.
“The data was only from July 10th.
So that was before we were getting into that unsettled pattern, and we were still hitting those triple-digit temperatures.
And we had some pretty extreme fire behavior across the region," said Meteorologist Megan Stackhouse.
Out of the five stages of drought, the extreme category is the fourth highest, and meteorologists are hopeful the county could go back down to lower stages when the next updated data comes out.

Hotter-than-normal temperatures and persistent dry conditions led to an uptick in moderate to severe drought across eastern Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and eastern Oklahoma, according to the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that 30% of continental U.S. (CONUS) and 66.4 million people are now being impacted by moderate drought or worse.
Extreme (D3) and Exceptional (D4) drought are affecting substantial areas of western Oklahoma, eastern Kansas, Texas, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and southern California.
Severe (D2) drought is present in eastern Oregon, southern California, Kansas, Utah, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, northern Missouri, southern Iowa, southern Arkansas, northern Louisiana, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Temperatures since October across the region have been well above normal: either top 10% or warmest on record since 1895.
Most of the region has received well-below-normal precipitation and some areas have been the driest on record since 1895.
He said beef cow slaughter in Region 6 is 10.4% higher than last year during the same period (through early June), with 14% more cows slaughtered since early April than in 2017.
Region 7, which includes both relatively dry Missouri and Kansas as well as Iowa and Nebraska, where timely rains have fallen, has seen beef cow slaughter up 6.7% year to date, and 8.8% in recent weeks, Brown noted.
“While it is still not clear whether the early spring cold temperatures and subsequent dry weather in portions of the country will be enough to result in a shrinking beef cow herd for the year, it is certain that poor pasture quality is taking a toll on many producers,” Brown said.
Related

Many Des Moines-area streets — including Merle Hay Road, Urbandale Avenue, Keosauqua Way and Mills Civic Parkway, to name a few — were inundated with floodwaters, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood emergency.
Des Moines police said a 65-year-old Des Moines man was swept away by floodwaters late Saturday near 50th Street and Twana Avenue, and authorities searched for the victim into the early-morning hours.
Paul Parizek said first responders found the body of the missing person around 12:40 a.m. Sunday.
The Iowa Department of Transportation reported that Interstate 35 southbound was blocked due to flooding in Ankeny.
Trained weather spotters reported flash flooding in those areas.
At one point in the night, rain fell at a rate of more than 4 inches per hour across much of the metro.
Other areas affected by flooding included Nevada, Huxley, Maxwell, Colo, Cambridge and Collins.
Weather officials saw rises along Walnut, Jordan, Beaver, Fourmile creeks, as well as the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, proving to be a dangerous situation with the rapid rises.
In the Des Moines suburb of Clive, city officials ordered that residents and businesses along Walnut Creek evacuate due to major flooding in the area.
Authorities in many Des Moines suburban areas — including Ankeny, Des Moines, Johnston and Urbandale — responded to water rescues, many of which were due to vehicles stalled in standing water.

The National Weather Service says parts of southeast Alaska are experiencing drought conditions following a winter and spring with lackluster snowfall and rain JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Parts of southeast Alaska are experiencing drought conditions following a winter and spring with lackluster snowfall and rain, according to the National Weather Service.
Ketchikan received 11.2 inches (28.5 centimeters) of precipitation in October and 7.6 inches (19.3 centimeters) in November, less than half the normal amounts expected for the rainiest months of the year, the Juneau Empire reported Wednesday.
“This was the most significant drought in the wet season in Southeast Alaska in 40-plus years,” said Aaron Jacobs, a weather service hydrologist.
The area’s conditions during the winter were unusual enough that the weather service had struggled to determine what constitutes a drought in the state, said Rick Thoman, a weather service climate specialist.
“This is something that we haven’t thought of a lot in Alaska, at least on the weather service side,” Thoman said.
“Eleven inches in a month — that’s a year’s worth for Fairbanks, but that is below normal for Ketchikan in the wet season.” Conditions returned closer to normal in late April, but locations in southeast Alaska remain with abnormally dry conditions, according to officials.
Ketchikan had 82 percent of its normal precipitation since October.
Officials are not turning their attention to how the drought could affect fisheries, Jacobs said.
With a smaller snowpack, less water will be flowing for salmon returning to rivers in the summer.
“That could have dire effects on fisheries,” Jacobs said ___ Information from: Juneau (Alaska) Empire, http://www.juneauempire.com

The National Weather Service presented a webinar this week about Southeast Alaska’s drought.
Southeast Alaska is the kind of place where you can get a lot of rain but still be in the middle of a drought.
“Drought is one of those things that, it seems like, oh, everybody knows what a drought is,” National Weather Service climate scientist Rick Thoman said.
The deficiency level and the time period can vary, Thoman said.
Ketchikan, for example, received record rainfall levels in August.
“Starting in September, we see that precipitation in Ketchikan totaled a little over 11 inches,” Thoman said.
But by Ketchikan standards, that was actually below normal.” Normal in September is closer to 15-16 inches.
“October, again, over 11 inches of rain, but that’s well below normal in Ketchikan in October, followed by well-below normal precipitation in November, as well,” Thoman said.
All that means overall precipitation in Southeast Alaska since fall has been below normal.
“If Southeast Alaska doesn’t get that rain in that October, November and into December time frame, there could be deficits in water levels that may not be able to recover.” When hydroelectric dams don’t have enough water, communities need to use more-expensive diesel power.

The National Weather Service has operated an office in Corpus Christi, Texas since 1887.
It moved to property at the international airport in 1995.
Chris Ramirez/Caller-Times Get your umbrellas ready.
The weather service has forecast a 40 percent chance of rain for Thursday and Friday, and a 50 percent chance of rain on Saturday.
The rain is much-needed in the area, as the Coastal Bend is in drought conditions.
On Wednesday, the city of Corpus Christi imposed Stage 1 water restrictions.
That may trigger additional stages in the drought contingency plan.
The first stage encourages voluntary water restrictions when the combined capacity of Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon reservoirs drop below 50 percent, according to the plan.
Those voluntary restrictions include using a sprinkler system once a week, while avoiding sprinkler use between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. and encourages restaurants to serve water only upon request.
Stage 2 aims to reduce water use by 10 percent, according to the plan.

Despite Saturday’s rainfall, Victoria County is still in a severe drought.
Earlier this week, analysis released by the U.S. Drought Monitor showed most of Victoria County suffering severe drought conditions.
Barron said Victoria County would need to receive more than 9 inches of rain to get out of the drought it is currently in.
Because of the lack of rain, the ground is dry and cracking, Barron said.
Kenneth Hanslik, a researcher for Chromatin, a sorghum seed company, said seasonal crops like corn, soybeans and cotton are seeing a harvest decrease.
He said cotton can handle a drought better than corn or soybeans, but it, too, can benefit from additional moisture.
Chris Buzek’s farm south of Victoria didn’t feel the rain’s impact.
“Oh yeah, we’re dry,” said Buzek, 31, of Inez.
All his crops, he said, are being affected by the drought.
“You’re going to have these (droughts) every once in a while.”

The move came as a result of monitoring the water at the Galesville and Berry Creek Dams and conversations with the Douglas County watermaster, Douglas County Public Works Director Scott Adams told the commissioners.
The move was not entirely unexpected.
Watermaster Susan Douthit had suggested last week a drought declaration might be in the offing.
Precipitation was low overall last winter, and May was unusually dry, with .27 inches of rain, about 2 inches below normal.
And it doesn’t look like water levels will improve this summer.
The National Weather Service in Medford reports Douglas County is expected to receive above-average temperatures and below-average rainfall over the summer months.
The county drought emergency was passed on a unanimous vote by the commissioners.
It will next go to the governor’s office for an official drought declaration.
The drought declaration follows on the heels of an announcement by the Douglas Forest Protective Association that fire season will begin Friday.
DFPA is anticipating a bad fire season, and the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center is redicting elevated fire risk in July.