Gulf Coast drought sees major improvement after heavy May rainfall

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:01]All right. Well, we've seen some much needed rainfall across the Gulf Coast with multiple rain events heading into the month of May. A real surplus of rain. We got a ton of rain early this week, especially Monday night and early Tuesday morning. So, let's see where we stand in terms of the drought situation, which has plagued the area for the first four months of the year. Now, we're starting to see some big-time improvements. And first graphic I want to show you here is radar estimated precipitation. This shows you where it rained. It gives a real good estimate.

[00:00:33]Usually, it's very close to the actual totals. The technologies really improved with this. And what we're confident about is that we just didn't see much rain in the inland sections of the forecast area with the exception of maybe 3/4 of an inch to an inch in southern Kka County, southern uh Monroe County. But northern clar county didn't see much. Most of the rain fell along Interstate 10 and just a little north of I 10 and up along Highway 98. Some spots really saw some substantial totals here.

[00:01:03]So, uh, here's a look at some of the areas that I've identified with the most rain. And it looks like out past Big Creek Lake, I'll bring it up full so you can see it good. Uh, just a little on the south side in the Big Creek drainage and the Eskataba drainage, almost 5 inches of rain fell. We saw about two inches close to I65 and I 10 in Mobile and uh out Highway 98 a lot of spots over an inch and a half to two inches um above Sarand and a little streak there.

[00:01:33]Calioa road area and back over to Chula about 3 and a half inches. uh soaking rain in George County, Jackson County, central Baldwin. The coast also picked up some rain, but the farmers in Bowwin County have been cashing in on some good rains. And we saw a lot north of Pensacola, but even a decent downpour in Pensacola, about a/ inch to 3/4 of an inch for you. So, a lot of spots saw another real good batch of rain. We're about to go into a drier period for about the next week. So, hopefully you got what you needed. Things are changing, but not necessarily for the worst. We're we need some dry weather.

[00:02:09]We don't want too much rain too fast.

[00:02:12]And let's take a look at the drought.

[00:02:13]Now, this product comes down once a week on Thursday. So, we're not going to get another update until later this week as of the taping of this, but you know, we're we're looking at still a severe to extreme drought. I think you're going to see an improvement to that graphic soon with the new update that comes down later this week. The rainfall deficit, why has it been such a struggle? Well, January 3.7 in below normal. February 3.0 in 3 in below normal. About 2 in below normal in March and 3 and a3 ines in April. So, it's been really hard to get some of that much needed rain in the area. And if you look at where we stack up for the year, ah, we're starting to see some changes. First of all, this month in May, we're so far about six inches. It says 5.56, but we got another half inch or so after midnight. It just hadn't been totaled up officially yet. So, we're around 6 ines for the month. We're going to we've got a departure from normal, actually above normal rainfall, over 4 in for the month if you count what we got after midnight last night. For the year, our deficit is going to be under eight inches by the time the day is done. So, we've almost cut the rainfall deficit in half and we're definitely in getting our shortterm moisture needs. The soil moisture is up and we're getting our shortterm water needs. Over the next seven days, it looks like very meager rain amounts anywhere from a a fraction of an inch to up to about maybe 210 of an inch, something like that. So, quarter of an inch along the panhandle coast and is the Bowwin County area. So, if you didn't get the rain over the last couple of rain events that you needed, you're probably going to have to wait a while. Looks like we have about a 7-day period where we're going to be mainly dry.

[00:04:08]Beyond that, I like our chances. It looks like the wetter than normal period from the 18th to the 22nd of this month is going to be more into Texas, but we're in the green, too. So, we're going to be slightly warmer than average. Uh wetter than average. We'll be warmer than average, also. And so that is going to add into the equation beyond the 7-day period. It looks like in the long long range we're going to start getting some rain back in here days 7 through 15 something like that.

[00:04:38]So about uh beyond a week in that period of a week to two weeks out we've got rain showers and thunderstorms coming back and we have that slightly wetter than normal look to it through the 26th.

[00:04:50]And so you're probably wondering when will we see that next rain? Well, let's take the European model and just run it for a long time. And you know, the weekend looks dry. The first of next week looks dry. Monday and Tuesday, but on Wednesday, we could start to see some isolated showers. And then kicking it.

[00:05:08]There's There you go. Wednesday, a little better shot at rain right there.

[00:05:11]Tuesday, maybe not so much, but Wednesday, some showers around and some thunderstorms. Obviously, the big rain's going to be back over Texas. But Thursday, we're going to see some rain pretty close to us, maybe in the area.

[00:05:23]And Friday, and again, these are long range models, but they show us trends that it will get unsettled again next week towards the back half of the week.

[00:05:32]Woo. So, we saw the rain we needed and we're going to get a little break and then the rain's going to come back and it looks like it wants to get here right around May 15 and then kind of continuing on into and around the 22nd of May. We'll start to get some scattered showers and thunderstorms back in the picture. But this was tough. I mean, we had four really dry months. It was an extraordinary drought. I would say that we've made tremendous progress in getting out of that drought. We still have technically a pretty substantial rainfall deficit and that may take a long time to to catch up, but the the soil moisture up, the yards are green and happy, the gardens are looking good and things are looking up. Now we get to enjoy some nice weather for the next week or so.