{"id":408450,"date":"2026-08-16T22:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T22:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/408450\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T22:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T22:26:14","slug":"most-of-d-fw-abnormally-dry-but-not-in-drought-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/408450\/","title":{"rendered":"Most of D-FW ‘abnormally dry’ but not in drought yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been almost a month since Dallas-Fort Worth got any measurable rain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On July 15, 0.07 inches of rain fell at DFW International Airport, according to the National Weather Service\u2019s Fort Worth office<\/a>, one of only two days with measurable precipitation last month. In the weeks since, a few days have recorded trace amounts of water, but the North Texas landscape has broadly been left to fry.<\/p>\n

However, strong spring precipitation has helped prevent D-FW from falling too far behind on annual rainfall<\/a>. Nearly 23 inches of rain have fallen at the airport this year, as of Aug. 14. That\u2019s less than an inch behind the 30-year average of 23.2 inches of water by mid-August.<\/p>\n

Significant rain in the late spring has kept Dallas out of drought, at least so far. Dallas County and much of North Texas have been rated \u201cabnormally dry\u201d by the U.S. Drought Monitor, which is usually associated with an increased risk of grass fires and declining surface water levels.<\/p>\n

Much of the state\u2019s land is similarly thirsty, but hasn\u2019t yet advanced to legitimate drought. Almost 30% of Texas\u2019 land falls under the \u201cabnormally dry\u201d classification, while 28% of the state is experiencing some level of official drought. The most severe drought is currently in the Texas Panhandle, with some also recorded in South Texas.<\/p>\n

However, without much rain in the forecast for Dallas-Fort Worth, formal drought is likely to materialize soon. The Climate Prediction Center issued an alert<\/a> Thursday that a prolonged heat wave is forecasted for the southern United States, including most of Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Given that heat wave and the recent lack of rain, the climate center warned that a \u201cRapid Onset Drought\u201d is underway for parts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas \u2014 including Dallas. This type of drought warning is issued when the prior 30 days have a significant precipitation deficit, high temperatures are expected and there is minimal rain in the forecast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been almost a month since Dallas-Fort Worth got any measurable rain.\u00a0 On July 15, 0.07 inches of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-408450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}