{"id":602258,"date":"2026-04-23T20:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/602258\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T20:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T20:34:10","slug":"drought-conditions-worsen-across-western-north-carolina-upstate-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/602258\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought conditions worsen across western North Carolina, Upstate this week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) \u2014 Extreme drought in western North Carolina and the South Carolina Upstate saw a big increase this week, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor released Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Just last week, 59% of the area was under extreme drought. This week, it jumped to 86% of our area.<\/p>\n<p>The state of North Carolina saw a 16% increase in area under extreme drought. Extreme drought covers 38% of the state, and 96% of the state is in severe drought status.<\/p>\n<p>South Carolina also saw an increase at 7% for areas under extreme drought. Extreme drought covers 40% of the state, and 99% of the state is in severe drought.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wlos.com\/news\/local\/avery-mitchell-north-carolina-brush-fire-wildfire-acres-contained-us-19-forest-service-controlled-backburning\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">BACKBURNING UNDERWAY AS CREWS FIGHT WILDFIRE NEAR MITCHELL-AVERY COUNTY LINE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>There is another layer of more serious drought. None of our area is in &#8216;Exceptional Drought&#8217; yet. Exceptional drought is occurring now in central and southern Georgia down into Florida where very intense wildfires continued to burn Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, our pattern does favor more chances for rain over the next week.<\/p>\n<p>We will likely see widespread light rain Saturday afternoon into Saturday night. We will see another round of light rain Monday night into Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>A longer-term pattern of rain events like these will eventually reverse our drought. Burn bans remain in effect for both North and South Carolina indefinitely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) \u2014 Extreme drought in western North Carolina and the South Carolina Upstate saw a big&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-602258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}