The Drought Is OVER!!!!

I am pleased to say that the drought of 2011 has been erased when the official US Drought Monitor was released at 7:30am this morning. What is remarkable about this improvement, is that it only took about 3 months to erase one of the worst natural disasters in this states history. That said, there are still many places in Texas considered to be in a drought, but the Brazos Valley is not under any official drought condition.

The following images are the official drought monitor that was put out this morning and the second image is a close in view of the Brazos Valley.

What you will notice is that we are still considered to be "abnormally dry." However, this is not considered to be within the drought categories. Also, look at the state as a whole. There is a stark difference between east Texas and west Texas. A lot of work remains for Big Bend and surrounding areas, but at least the state as a whole continues to pull out of this disaster.

The question is.....will we hop back into another drought? Tough to say right now, but one wonders because we crawled out of this one in such little time. What I can say is that a phenomenon called La Nina is weakening and is turning into a neutral phase. Basically, waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean have been much colder than average (La Nina). Now they will return to average temperatures (neutral phase) by the end of April. Therefore, if further warming occurs, then we will be in and El Nino phase. During the summer, this phase will favor average rainfall and average temperatures.

Overall, many questions still to be answered about the long term future, but we are not likely to fall into another prolonged dry spell for the next several months.

Finally, the rainfall we received yesterday and today, just helps us even more.

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