{"id":10112,"date":"2012-05-08T15:27:31","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T20:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=10112"},"modified":"2012-05-08T15:34:33","modified_gmt":"2012-05-08T20:34:33","slug":"for-now-the-texas-drought-stays-on-one-side-of-a-divided-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/05\/08\/for-now-the-texas-drought-stays-on-one-side-of-a-divided-line\/","title":{"rendered":"For Now, the Texas Drought Stays on One Side of a Dividing Line"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Map by National Weather Service<\/p>

The National Weather Service says the state could see significant rains between now and Sunday.<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s been raining across Texas,<\/a> and more is on the way. In the map to the right from the National Weather Service, you can see predictions for rainfall<\/a> between three to five inches through Sunday this week for much of the state.<\/p>\n

It’s welcome news for West Texas, which continues to struggle<\/a>\u00a0with\u00a0the ongoing drought<\/a>, while the eastern half has greatly (though not completely) recovered.\u00a0A new repor<\/a>t by the Texas Agrilife\u00a0Extension\u00a0at Texas A&M University sheds some light on why one half of Texas has suffered more than the other.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that was unexpected was having East Texas not be in an extreme drought right now,\u201d Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, state climatologist, told Agrilife Extension. \u201cWe had a second year of La Ni\u00f1a last winter. It just finally ended officially last month. And normally \u2013 four years out of five \u2013 you end up with a dry winter. So things have worked out as well as possibly can be expected for East Texas.\u201d But West Texas,\u00a0Nielsen-Gammon said, is now in its second year of major drought. And above-normal temperatures aren’t helping.<\/p>\n

A field report from Far West Texas (including the cities of Midland and Odessa) says that ranchers are culling their herds and having to use supplemental feed. “Without a significant rain soon, most will have to ship cattle out of the area,” the report says. “Livestock numbers remained low due to continuing drought conditions.” The field report for West Central Texas (including the city of San Angelo) says that moisture is “rapidly decreasing” in the soil and that all of the counties there need rain.\u00a0“Fire dangers have been noted in all areas,” the report says.<\/p>\n

You can read more over at the Agrilife Extension’s Crop and Weather report<\/a>. And you can learn more about the historic Texas drought at our interactive webpage:\u00a0\u2018Dried Out: Confronting the Texas Drought.\u2019\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been raining across Texas, and more is on the way. In the map to the right from the National Weather Service, you can see predictions for rainfall between three to five inches through Sunday this week for much of the state. It’s welcome news for West Texas, which continues to struggle\u00a0with\u00a0the ongoing drought, while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":1740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[61,140,85],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10112"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10143,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10112\/revisions\/10143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}