{"id":757103,"date":"2026-04-27T17:51:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/757103\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T17:51:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:51:20","slug":"did-the-weekend-rain-ease-the-drought-wral-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/757103\/","title":{"rendered":"Did the weekend rain ease the drought? :: WRAL.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Were we all thankful for the rain this weekend? Yes! Was it
\nenough to help with the drought. Not really.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took a long time to get into this drought, and it will
\ntake a long time to get out of it,\u201d Meteorologist Elizabeth Gardner says.<\/p>\n

Some areas had over an inch of rain this weekend. We officially had .55\u201d of rain at RDU. As of
\nApril 26, this is still the second driest start to spring on
\nrecord. We\u2019ve had 2.26\u201d so far at RDU this spring. We are still 4.92\u201d below
\nnormal for the season.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

When going back to the beginning of the year, the picture is
\neven worse. It\u2019s the driest start on record going back to Jan. 1.
\nWe\u2019ve had 6.61\u201d for the year at RDU. That puts us at 6.78\u201d below normal for the
\nyear.<\/p>\n

If you continue to go back in time, it doesn\u2019t get better.
\nGoing back to Oct. 1, we are 11.66\u201d below normal.<\/p>\n

We need 10 to 13 inches of rain in one month\u2019s time to
\nreally get out of this drought. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe do have some good rain chances in the
\nforecast this week, but it\u2019s still not enough,\u201d Meteorologist Aimee Wilmoth
\nsays. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe could get up to half an inch of rain this week, which means we would still need 9.5 to 12.5\u201d of rain to get out of the drought,\u201d Wilmoth says.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

We get updated drought monitors every Thursday morning. The WRAL
\nSevere Weather Team will share that information in the weeks and months ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Were we all thankful for the rain this weekend? Yes! Was it enough to help with the drought.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":757104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[23],"tags":[6772,746,159,67,132,68,313,162586],"class_list":["post-757103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-drought","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-weather","tag-wral-specialists"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116477944761004496","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}