Well this isn’t the best of news to hear… but East Texas is still in a drought.However, improvements are expected.

According to the United States Drought Monitor, much of East Texas is under a moderate drought, with counties such as Smith, Henderson, Anderson, Cherokee and Houston under a severe drought. All of this coming after a month in which we had above normal precipitation. January we picked up 4.13 inches of precipitation, which is above the normal of 3.06 inches. December, however, was a very dry month. We only saw 1.18 inches that month, and we normally see 4.24 inches to wrap up the calendar year.

However, more rain this week could help the situation out. We say “could” because there is the threat for flooding around. According to short term outlooks, it looks like much of East Texas will see 2 to 6 inches of rain through Wednesday night of this week. Then more rain looks to be possible this weekend.

The rain will certainly help out the drought situation, but anytime you get a lot of rain with dry ground, flooding is a concern. Add on top of that a lot of rain, and the flooding threat is even higher.

The outlook for the month of February indicates that most of East Texas will be removed from the drought, but some areas southwest of Tyler could stay in a moderate drought or abnormally dry pattern.

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