03/21/2024

Last week a Rex block, a phenomenon in the atmosphere that blocked low pressure systems from moving past our area, disrupted our usual weekly weather pattern. This caused widespread, slow moving, and rainfall-heavy storms to pass through the Southern region from the I-35 corridor and eastward on Thursday, Friday, and into the weekend. These storms spanned from Oklahoma to Texas, sweeping across to the east, resulting in widespread one-classification improvements in areas that received the most significant rainfall.

Although some areas were fortunate to receive high rain totals last week, west Texas and west Oklahoma did not. Due to this, one-class degradations were experienced along the Big Bend region and the Oklahoma panhandle, where warm and windy conditions caused soil moisture to fall below normal. Overall, improvements in most areas led to the contraction of drought in the southern climate region, from 45% of the region experiencing some drought on March 12th, to 37.4% on March 19th. Most notably, rainfall over the past weeks in Mississippi has impressively improved the state’s drought conditions. Three months ago, 99.99% of the state was experiencing drought - over half of the state in the (D3) Extreme Drought category. As of last week, 79% of the state is no longer affected by drought.

The Rex block continued to influence the region this week as it weakened, and allowed low pressure systems to pass through the Southern Region. Looking to the future, the Climate Prediction Center has confidence that most of the Southern region will receive below-normal rainfall and near to below-normal temperatures next week.