Drought development now likely

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - We’ve talked about the unusually dry weather across Alabama quite a bit of late. Now it’s looking like drought conditions will settle in for parts of the state as October continues on.

The Climate Prediction Center has highlighted a chunk of Alabama in their “drought development likely” category on their U.S. Monthly Drought Outlook for October. This doesn’t tell us when drought conditions would officially be met, but it does tell us that at some point this month there will be drought conditions across Alabama.

The area highlighted includes southern and western parts of the state. However, locations not included in the yellow shade on the map below could certainly see drought conditions develop later this month.

At the very least most of us should be in the “abnormally dry” category when this week’s Drought Monitor update comes out. You’ll likely start noticing more brown and hard grass, crops getting stressed and small ponds and creeks drying.

The forecast doesn’t call for any rainfall through at least October 13th. That’s a pretty safe bet considering no long-range model really brings any mentionable moisture into Alabama for the next 10 days.

It is possible that after October 13th things change enough to allow some rain chances to return to the forecast. That is by no means a guarantee, though. It’s possible that the dry streak continues well beyond October 13th.

To put our current dryness into perspective, we are at 13 consecutive dry days in Montgomery. Should the next 10 days be entirely dry like we think they will, the dry streak will at 23 days. That would be good for the 8th-longest completely dry stretch in Montgomery over the last 30 years!

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