{"id":670808,"date":"2026-05-28T21:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T21:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/670808\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T21:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T21:09:09","slug":"rainfall-improves-drought-across-wnc-and-upstate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/670808\/","title":{"rendered":"Rainfall improves drought across WNC and Upstate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(WLOS) \u2014 The latest U.S. Drought Monitor was released this morning.<\/p>\n<p>The data shows that recent rain has improved the drought situation, somewhat, across western North Carolina and the Upstate.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The data shows that recent rain has improved the drought situation, somewhat, across western North Carolina and the Upstate.\" class=\"ImageEmbed_image__qZBo_\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/5160bb01-a646-428d-b01a-319f9215a5de-Newdrought.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The data shows that recent rain has improved the drought situation, somewhat, across western North Carolina and the Upstate.<\/p>\n<p>However, our area still has a long way to go before the drought ends.<\/p>\n<p>Last week&#8217;s drought monitor showed more than 90 percent of the region in an extreme drought, with 5 percent in the highest category of drought, a D4 Exceptional Drought.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Previous drought monitor from May 19, 2026 (WLOS)\" class=\"ImageEmbed_image__qZBo_\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/449295c6-5875-459c-86bf-c61e260ae269-00.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Previous drought monitor from May 19, 2026 (WLOS)<\/p>\n<p>The new drought monitor shows that the majority of the region has fallen from a D3 Extreme Drought to a D2 Severe Drought.<\/p>\n<p>However, a significant portion of western North Carolina, including most of the counties west of Asheville, remains in the Extreme Drought category.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"After a dry spell, the Asheville Regional Airport picked up more than seven and a half inches of rain over an eight-day period. (WLOS)\" class=\"ImageEmbed_image__qZBo_\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/9c176386-627e-485f-bdb6-b9937077d036-drought2.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>After a dry spell, the Asheville Regional Airport picked up more than seven and a half inches of rain over an eight-day period. (WLOS)<\/p>\n<p>After a dry spell, the Asheville Regional Airport picked up more than seven and a half inches of rain over an eight-day period.<\/p>\n<p>Comment with Bubbles<\/p>\n<p>JOIN THE CONVERSATION (1)<\/p>\n<p>The wettest day was Memorial Day, when nearly three inches of rain fell at the airport and parts of Henderson County experienced flash flooding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(WLOS) \u2014 The latest U.S. Drought Monitor was released this morning. The data shows that recent rain has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-670808","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\/670808","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=670808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}