New Outlook: Drought Conditions Expected To Worsen In The Rockies, Florida

More bad news is in store for much of the western US: drought is likely to be a growing worry as we move through the spring months.

Drought conditions are expected to worsen across large sections of the Central and Southern Rockies and Plains and also in the Southeast, as shown in the yellow shading on the map below. An enormous swath of real estate in the western half of the United States will see persisting drought, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Omaha and Phoenix.

However, there is some bit of good news in the Great Lakes and Northwest. Drought conditions are expected to end in portions of Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Washington and Wisconsin. A wet spring is expected to help there.

Much of the Four Corners into Nevada have already seen a large degradation of conditions over the last month. A few pockets of exceptional drought have developed in Arizona, Nevada and Texas.

Widespread drought in the Northern Plains hasn’t changed much recently as most of the winter storms have avoided the area, but the drought isn’t expected to worsen there either.

(MORE: Record Warmth Awakens Spring’s First Leaves, And Unleashes The Pollen)

Another area of concern is the I-95 corridor from Maine to South Carolina and into Florida. Extreme drought has developed in New Jersey. In Florida, the typical dry season will likely take the ongoing moderate to severe drought toward extreme drought by the time the rainy season begins in June.

Outlooks For The Spring

Part of the reason much of the Southwest is expected to delve toward a more severe drought is that a drier, warmer spring is expected. This pattern for both the precipitation and temperature outlooks are very similar to what you would expect from a La Niña, although the cool phase of ENSO is expected to fade as we near summer.

(MORE: Fading La Niña Conditions Expected By Summer)

The Northwest has had storm after storm jettisoned onshore by atmospheric rivers and that trend is likely to continue through at least the start of spring.

Also familiar to La Niña, wetter conditions are expected from the Great Lakes to the Tennessee Valley. Flooding actually may be more of a concern in some locations, especially from the Ohio Valley to the Appalachians, where flash flooding has already killed more than a dozen people in recent weeks.

Jonathan Belles has been a graphics meteorologist and writer for weather.com for 8 years and also assists in the production of videos for The Weather Channel en español. His favorite weather is tropical weather, but also enjoys covering high-impact weather and news stories and winter storms. He’s a two-time graduate of Florida State University and a proud graduate of St. Petersburg College.

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