{"id":3716,"date":"2011-12-26T10:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-12-26T16:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=3716"},"modified":"2012-02-09T16:35:57","modified_gmt":"2012-02-09T22:35:57","slug":"0-01-of-texas-is-no-longer-in-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/12\/26\/0-01-of-texas-is-no-longer-in-drought\/","title":{"rendered":"0.01% of Texas is No Longer in Drought"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3718\"  class=\"wp-caption module image center\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"A map shows the 0.01 percent of Texas no longer in drought.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/drought-map.png\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3718\" title=\"drought map\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/drought-map-620x476.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"476\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/drought-map-620x476.png 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/drought-map-300x230.png 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/drought-map-220x169.png 220w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/12\/drought-map.png 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Map by National Drought Mitigation center<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A map shows the 0.01 percent of Texas no longer in drought.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Christmas came a little early for a small slice of Texas this year. We can now say that part of Texas is no longer in drought. A small part, to be sure, only 0.01 percent, but it&#8217;s happy news nonetheless.<\/p>\n<p>According to new data from the <a href=\"http:\/\/droughtmonitor.unl.edu\/DM_state.htm?TX,S\">National Drought Mitigation Center<\/a> at the University of Nebraska (with a grateful hat tip to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/about\/staff\/kate-galbraith\/\">Kate Galbraith<\/a> of the <em>Texas Tribune<\/em>), a sliver of Texas along the Texas-Oklahoma border is officially drought-free. Just east of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=3&amp;sqi=2&amp;ved=0CE0QFjAC&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imdb.com%2Ftitle%2Ftt0087884%2F&amp;ei=C__0TtenMerE2QXTvbypAg&amp;usg=AFQjCNGc94X7t2WLAr6NAI_8ZmjQafrU-w&amp;sig2=EvdRGSVrt0rsTacM5K7zrw\">Paris, Texas<\/a>, 3.7 percent of Red River County is no longer in drought, representing 0.01 percent of the entire state.<!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"related-content alignright\"><h4 class=\"related-header\">Related<\/h4><div class=\"links\"><h5>Posts<\/h5><ul><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/12\/20\/hundreds-of-millions-of-trees-could-be-lost-to-the-drought\/\">Hundreds of Millions of Trees Could be Lost to the Drought<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/12\/21\/texas-wildfires-scattered-birds-to-the-wind\/\">Texas Wildfires Scattered Birds to the\u00a0Wind<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/12\/21\/dallas-wastewater-keeps-trinity-flowing-houston-drinking\/\">Dallas Wastewater Keeps Trinity Flowing, Houston Drinking<\/a><\/li><li class=\"link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2011\/12\/23\/after-bastrop-fires-a-season-of-reflection-and-rebuilding\/\">After Bastrop Fires, a Season of Reflection and Rebuilding<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/div><div class=\"topics\"><h5>Topics<\/h5><p class=\"topic\"><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2011\/11\/119835727-60x60.jpg\" height=\"60\" width=\"60\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/topic\/drought\/\">Everything You Need to Know About the Texas Drought<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<p>At the beginning of the year, nearly 8 percent of the state wasn&#8217;t in drought and none of Texas was at the &#8220;exceptional&#8221; level of drought. Today, nearly 39 percent of Texas is at the &#8220;exceptional&#8221; level, the most severe stage of drought.<\/p>\n<p>Put simply, the drought is far from over. Saturday the state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon wrote on his blog that &#8220;it\u2019s hard to break out of a drought when you\u2019re still setting records.&#8221; Those broken records? He put together a list. So far this year, including estimates for December, Texas has put up the following numbers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Driest April-December on record (by \u00bd inch)<\/li>\n<li>Driest March-December on record (by \u00be inch)<\/li>\n<li>Driest February-December on record (by 1 inch)<\/li>\n<li>Driest January-December (driest calendar year) on record (by \u00bc inch)<\/li>\n<li>Driest fifteen consecutive months on record (by \u00be inch)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>He also found that these have been the driest 18-24 months since the 1960s, and the driest 36-60 months since the 1960s. So is there any solace to take from the recent rains? Nielsen-Gammon says yes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The rain so far has been great for the soil.\u00a0 As is usual with rain during a drought, the first rains are absorbed by the soil, with very little runoff.\u00a0 Only in the past month have we started to see lake levels rising around the state.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What does the future hold? It&#8217;s weather, so good luck prognosticating, but Nielsen-Gammon took a look at La Ni\u00f1a weather patterns and found that after this recent spell of wet weather, &#8220;the large-scale weather patterns will change into a warmer and drier configuration, which should put us back on track with the seasonal outlook and, yes, allow the drought to persist.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bah, Humbug!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas came a little early for a small slice of Texas this year. We can now say that part of Texas is no longer in drought. A small part, to be sure, only 0.01 percent, but it&#8217;s happy news nonetheless. According to new data from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":3718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[61,110,85],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716"}],"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=3716"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3728,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions\/3728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}