The latest weekly drought monitor was released today and it does show small improvements over last week’s report…especially for Johnson, Ellis, Navarro and Henderson counties just south of Dallas…but that’s likely to be short-lived.  Mother nature was kind this past week and gave the panhandle a bit of a break, and brought additional beneficial rain across east Texas where drought conditions have been the worst.  BUT…we still need more…especially in north central Texas where some areas have seen less than 1/10th of an inch in the past 30 days.  My house in particular north of Dallas has not seen rain in well over 50 days, even with the storms that impacted the metroplex Tuesday afternoon. It’s been very hit or miss for many folks. Parts of central and southwest Texas…same thing!  Bone dry once again with parched foliage just ready for something to spark a wildfire.

Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the next 7 days.  Conditions are expected to remain mostly dry with high pressure remaining the dominant weather feature.  The caveat to that will be the expected development of an upper level low over coastal Louisiana that’s expected to retrograde west across coastal Texas by early next week.  This could bring the potential for 1/4 to 1/2 inches of rain across southeast and south central Texas…but that does little to help areas further north and in dire need of rain like yesterday.  These types of upper level lows tend to be flaky, so I wouldn’t count on very much just yet.  We’ll likely have to wait until the effects of El Nino kick in this fall before we see a return of consistent rainfall across the state.