Texas drought: Southeast Texas exits drought after wet start to May, heavy rainfall
Houston weather: Sunny, dry Thursday afternoon with temps in 80s
We'll close out the work week with more sunny, dry, warm days and another Ozone Action Day in effect for Thursday. A cold front brings a chance of strong to severe storms and more drought relief well northwest of here over the next few days, meanwhile we'll see an increase in weekend cloud cover and only isolated to scattered rain chances. We've kicked the drought to the curb completely with all of our early month rain. Outdoor graduations over the next few days and the weekend should be mostly fine but keep an eye on things through the FOX 26 weather app.
Texas - The latest drought monitor update this morning shows that drought has been alleviated altogether across the FOX 26 viewing area thanks to heavy rainfall at the start of May. Before today's update, there were only a few areas experiencing abnormally dry conditions with a small patch of moderate drought near Matagorda Bay.
After receiving record-breaking rainfall in and around Palacios, the drought is now gone altogether in southeast Texas.
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Statewide, we also saw improvements, but it is a tale of two extremes when comparing East Texas to West Texas where several areas of extreme to exceptional drought still exist. While 49.31% of Texas is still experiencing a drought of some form, 38.22% is now drought-free (an increase of nearly 5% over last week).
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While each category saw reductions, the most noteworthy was a nearly 10% reduction in categories severe or worse across the Lone Star State.
Here's a recap of the rainfall that occurred within the first few weeks of the month.