It's looking like we're done with rain for the rest of June. It will finish off as one of drier months as compared to normal in the last couple of years. The rain chances will remain nil through Thursday with just a minimal pop up thunderstorm chance by Friday, as we start July.
Over the weekend, there were some folks who got at least a bit of drought relief. There were thunderstorms both Saturday and Sunday, but that area was confined to eastern Kentucky. According to the Kentucky Mesonet, a few folks saw over an inch of rain during the weekend with Paintsville leading the way. Hindman, Jackson and even West Liberty got good soaking rainfall. A lot of places were between a 1/4 to 1/2 inch, which at least we didn't lose any ground. However, most places north of I-64 and east of I-75 saw virtually nothing. Even parts of Lexington, Jessamine and Madison Counties saw very little, if any, rainfall.
What's amazing as we look at the whole month of June, it's remarkably dry. South of I-64, rainfall for the month is generally less than 2 inches. In Booneville, the rain gauge hasn't even recorded an inch of rain for the entire month. Some of the places that are showing near normal amounts, it can be a bit misleading as in places like Maysville, most of that fell from one storm a couple of weeks ago, and it has dried considerably since then. Something to keep in mind as well, we've seen several very hot days that evaporate more moisture out of the soil. This is how droughts can become self perpetuating.
To help clarify the dryness, instead of just looking at the numbers of how little rain has fallen, we can look at it as a percentage of normal rainfall. This is an exclusive feature within our futuretrack that runs an algorithm comparing rainfall amounts to normal. Most every place south of I-64 is less than half of the normal rainfall. There are places like southern Madison County that have received only about a third of normal rainfall.
This past weekend's system overall underperformed with the rainfall. This has become a pattern over the last few months, and one that can be significant as the summer continues. Droughts tend to feed on themselves, and once the snowball gets going, it can be hard to stop. Hopefully, something will change in this pattern in the near term, but right now, expect more of the same with the dry weather continuing.
