DUANE SHERRILLEditor

Moore County remains in extreme drought conditions according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, as what rain has fallen during November has not been enough to make up for a very dry October. Coffee County is split between severe and moderate drought, with the western fourth that borders Bedford and Moore counties falling under severe and the eastern three-fourths being in moderate drought.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, Moore County fell 3.13 inches short of its average precipitation during October. The lack of rain has left Moore and nearby counties to the north and west in a similar situation, while areas toward Lincoln County and south into Alabama are actually in an exceptional drought – the most extreme form of drought on the monitor.

The revelation from the Drought Monitor comes after Moore County has fallen in arears in precipitation for most of the summer, leading to the designation to extreme drought.

The outlook for the coming weeks is unclear as it pertains to the swath of Tennessee, which includes Moore County that is in extreme drought.

The summary for the Southeastern United States reveals that precipitation was highly variable across the Southeast Region again last week. Little or no rain fell on the Florida Peninsula, the southern half of Georgia, and southern South Carolina, where dryness and drought generally persisted with a few areas of intensification. West of this area, however, precipitation was abundant across Mississippi and the northwestern half of Alabama, where amounts of 1.5 to locally 4.0 inches fell. And to the north, moderate to locally heavy precipitation fell across most of the Carolinas and Virginia, with totals exceeding 1.5 inches in much of the Virginia Tidewater. Several areas of dryness and drought improved in northern and western reaches of the region, especially where rains were heaviest across parts of Mississippi and northwestern Alabama. More limited improvement was introduced in northwestern Georgia and across both southeastern and southwestern Virginia, primarily in areas of moderate to severe drought (D1 to D2) last week. In the areas with little or no rain, dryness and drought generally persisted, but conditions deteriorated to D2 in southeastern Alabama and adjacent parts of Georgia and Florida. Meanwhile, moderate drought was introduced in a band from the north-central Florida Peninsula eastward into northeastern Florida, and a new area of abnormal dryness (D0) was introduced in southern Florida where rainfall totals ranged from one-half to two-thirds of normal for the past couple of months.

The USDA uses the Drought Monitor to trigger disaster declarations and eligibility for low-interest loans. The Farm Service Agency uses it to help determine eligibility for their Livestock Forage Disaster Program, and the Internal Revenue Service uses it for tax deferral on forced livestock sales due to drought. State, local, tribal and basin-level decision makers use it to trigger drought responses or declare drought emergencies, ideally along with other local indicators of drought. Though these various entities use the USDM, it does not in itself trigger any political actions.