The U.S. National Weather Service’s West Gulf River Forecast Center says drought conditions continue to worsen across most of the Rio Grande Valley and into San Antonio and Austin.
Drought conditions have worsened moving southeast from New Mexico, the forecast center said yesterday.
Far east Texas and portions of New Mexico are the only regions showing any area of improvement.
According to a Tuesday report from the U.S. Drought Monitor, only a few tenths-of-an-inch of precipitation has fallen since early February across central and south-central Texas.
Seventeen sites reported rainfall totals among the driest two percent of the historical distribution for the period.
“For the past half-year as a whole, less than 10 percent of normal precipitation has been observed in part of west-central Texas, including much of the Big Bend, while less than 25 percent of normal fell on most of the western half of Texas and the Oklahoma Panhandle,” the Drought Monitor reported. “In addition, episodes of low humidity and strong winds worsened the situation across the already-parched region, leading to high wildfire danger and areas of blowing dust.”
