Archived Outdoors

Drought disappears

Written by
Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Drought has officially disappeared from the mountains.

The latest drought map shows drought designations absent from all 100 counties, with just six counties in Western North Carolina ranked as abnormally dry. Those counties are Jackson, Macon, Swain, Graham, Clay and Cherokee counties. 

This is the wettest the state has been since March 2016 and the wettest the western region has been since April 2016. Following the spring of last year, drought steadily intensified until it culminated in the historic wildfire season of fall 2016. Since then, drought has been slowly receding. 

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