UC Drought On The Decline; Rainfall Next Five Days Will Help

The southern portion of the Upper Cumberland remains in an extreme drought, but two chances at rain the next several days could make a significant impact.

National Weather Service Nashville Meteorologist-in-Charge Krissy Hurley said it will take time to get beyond a very dry summer and fall.

“It would probably take a good, you know, four to six inches total to really knock the drought off the map,” Hurley said. “But if we can get a good solid two inches here in the next week or so as far as rainfall amounts, that’s really going to hit a big dent into things.”

Hurley said the extended drought was due to an unusually calm hurricane season that came alongside the usual dry period of the Tennessee fall. She said the rains are being brought on due to a strong El Niño this year, which is expected to bring more rain in the coming months.

The northern counties of the Upper Cumberland show severe drought on the latest monitor map released each Thursday. Areas from Putnam County south show extreme drought. The entire state shows a lack of rainfall.

“That’s really going to help alleviate some of the worst areas that have experienced drought,” Hurley said.

Hurley said the drought is part of a consistent trend in the area and does not indicate any more droughts anytime soon.

“We had a really significant one is 2007, there was a dry period in 2012, and of course how can we forget 2016?” Hurley said. “And so it’d been several years since we had experienced dry conditions. So it’s pretty typical for our area, every five to seven years, to find ourselves in what we consider severe or worse kind of drought. So I wouldn’t expect that it’s going to get any more frequent or anything like that.”

Hurley said people still need to take precautions even as the drought begins to decrease.

“It’s not a good time to burn anything,” Hurley said. “With January and February, March, we’re getting into our windier months as well. And so you want to just burn this wood pile or burn your Christmas tree that, you know, hasn’t had much, you know, water and it’s dried out. You want to avoid those kind of things, especially on the windier days, because when we’ve been real dry, we haven’t had a whole lot of rain, it doesn’t take much wind to spread those fires quickly.”

Hurley said she does not think this drought will have a lasting impact on the area once it is finished.

“I suspect in three, four months we’ll probably be talking about floods in the next interview and the drought will be a distant memory,” Hurley said.