Severe to exceptional drought continues to plague western and southern Texas. The worst possible drought designation, exceptional, is concentrated in the Davis Mountains, Guadalupe Mountains, and southwestern Texas Panhandle. Severe to extreme drought conditions have been observed across the Edwards Plateau, South Texas Plains, and the Rio Grande Plains. Moderate to severe drought is present in the Hill Country southeastward into San Antonio.

This week’s Texas drought monitor update has forty-four percent of Texas in a drought. Over three-fifths of Texas is considered abnormally dry or worse. Those numbers have decreased since last week and certainly aren’t anywhere near our all-time worst set in October of 2011. Just under seventeen percent of the state is in extreme or exceptional drought. That number was at one hundred percent back in the fall of 2011.

One-month drought change map

Over the last month, multiple precipitation events, including two significant winter storms, have brought substantial drought relief to the Concho Valley, Big Country, and Central Texas. We always like the one-month change maps to show green versus grey or yellow.

Upcoming Precipitation Outlook

Forecast rain totals over the next week from the Weather Prediction Center & NOAA.

Upcoming rain chances over the next week do not bode well for any drought relief. A quick-hitting round of light rain is likely late Friday and on Saturday across Texas’s eastern third. If you manage to get more than a few hundreds of an inch of rain, you’ll be among the lucky ones. Rain chances will end by dinner-time Saturday, with gusty winds ongoing across much of the state on Saturday. A potent upper-level storm system, associated with a pattern change, will sweep across the United States’ Plains on Wednesday and Thursday. There may be at least a slight chance of rain with a cold front, but that’s still out in the land of weather model voodoo.