The weekly update to the US Drought Monitor was released yesterday and while improvements were made thanks to recent rains, there are still two regions of D3 "Extreme Drought" remaining in the state. One such region includes Vinton, which is the subject of today's featured chart showing the accumulated frequency to accumulate three inches of precipitation after 26 April based on period of record observations. Three inches would certainly help out the drought situation, but that amount of rain would need to fall more quickly than climatology to help ease longer term precipitation departures. This is sort of the conundrum of "drought busting" as precipitation totals need to well above average to make up longer term deficits. If the site got three inches by the middle of May, that would only be near average and longer term deficits would remain. This is a reason why the D3 drought remains in the areas that have not had all that impressive of precipitation totals this spring.

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