{"id":394603,"date":"2026-09-09T09:42:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T09:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/394603\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T09:42:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T09:42:58","slug":"updated-drought-monitor-showing-little-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/394603\/","title":{"rendered":"Updated drought monitor showing little change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s updated drought monitor shows some slight improvement in parts of Western Martin, St. Lucie and Okeechobee Counties. Drought levels have been reduced from a Severe (D2) to a Moderate (D1) drought. Areas impacted include Indiantown.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Drought monitor comparison\" class=\"ImageEmbed_image__qZBo_\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"365\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/be8c4394-c5da-40bd-bb5e-bf72af94a6ca-Droughtmonitorcomparison.png\" width=\"648\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Drought monitor comparison<\/p>\n<p>Otherwise, all of Palm Beach County remains in a moderate (Eastern) to Severe (Western) drought.  Coastal areas of the Treasure Coast from Vero Beach to Jensen Beach are in good shape.<\/p>\n<p>The year to date rainfall numbers explain it very well. While Vero Beach has a marked surplus of rainfall, West Palm Beach has a deficit of more than 5 inches.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Rainfall year to date\" class=\"ImageEmbed_image__qZBo_\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"365\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/524e730d-4fbb-4674-8eb0-0eae97ad3b53-Rainfallyeartodate.png\" width=\"648\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Lake Okeechobee remains more than 3 feet below the historical average. This is due to the ongoing severe drought all along the Kissimmee River Valley, the main waterway that feeds the lake.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Lake Okeechobee\" class=\"ImageEmbed_image__qZBo_\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"365\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/3bb1ca00-1589-4b63-9782-011551fccb36-LakeOkeechobee.png\" width=\"648\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today&#8217;s updated drought monitor shows some slight improvement in parts of Western Martin, St. Lucie and Okeechobee Counties.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-394603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}