NorthHillsWx

High 85.8 here. Straight up mid summer feel, even the lawn crunch. Insane pattern. What the west dealt with all winter

Bad bad bad, water restrictions a given this summer

Drought worsened significantly across the entire region on the latest drought monitor.

That was impressive

12z GFS is under 1” total rainfall for almost the entire state of NC and most of SC and almost all that comes from a FROPA in about a week. Not good. Mountain areas do look to have semi consistent afternoon storms though that could help but there just aren’t any large scale storms to help region wide

Overnight models again trended lower with precip over next 10 days

There were over 100 active fires in NC yesterday. Entire state is a tinder box

And to make matters worse all of the rain it’s showing now is from afternoon popup storms which are highly variable and not super beneficial for regional drought relief. Thunderstorm roulette in the afternoon is not where you wanna be to break severe+ drought conditions

As temps and sun angle increase through spring, so does evaporation. Also, vegetation coming out of dormancy increases water uptake from soil. So 1/2” in winter goes a lot further than 1/2” in summer. Couple this with increasing water usage for lawns, In other words, we’re in trouble with a rapidly worsening drought. This is when we will see lake levels start to plummet. We need repeated widespread 1-3” rains to make a serious dent at this point

This has gotta be one of the warmest march’s in history. We get a 1-2 day cooldown then right back to 80s or even 90. No spring this year we’ve jumped into a summer pattern

0.31” here from yesterdays storms

Drought going to worsen to “Extreme” category for much of NC given recent trends and where we already are. Truly could be a historic summertime drought unless El Niño effects hurry up. Scary going into summer with drought status where it is

Bottomed out right below freezing, 31.9. Looking across central NC looks like most areas (besides RDU) got below freezing with some areas seeing sub-28 degree freezes. Pretty big temp bust by NWS I don’t think anyone was explicitly forecast to get below freezing. That’s now the 4th 32 or lower reading this month IMBY

Topped out at 88.5 yesterday. The pollening has begun

Clouds moved in again and prevented us from bottoming out, only got to 34.3 here