Heavy Rains Skip Texas City, Now 'Poster Child' of Drought

Although the California drought and related wildfires have attracted most of the media attention over the past few weeks, a creeping drought disaster has continued in other parts of the Southwest and southern Plains states, including New Mexico and Texas. While heavy rains finally brought some relief to these two states, as well as sections of Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas, during the past week, the rains cruelly skipped some parched towns almost entirely.

But first, the good news

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The rainfall vaulted several locations out of deep precipitation deficits to running above average for the year — locations such as Lubbock, Texas; San Angelo, Texas; and Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell, for example, had received just 0.41 inches of rain from Jan. 1 through May 21, which was 15% of average rainfall. But slow-moving showers and thunderstorms moved through between May 22 and May 26, dumping nearly 4.5 inches of rain, which skyrocketed the percentage of normal precipitation so far in 2014 to 162% of average. Read more...

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