As the new year approaches, the rainfall deficit has continued to mount since November — leaving all of Rhea County, half of Bledsoe and portions of Hamilton, Meigs and Coffee counties in extreme drought, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor.
The remaining counties in Southeast Tennessee are experiencing severe drought or abnormally dry conditions that have lingered for weeks, the monitor shows. Over the past week, moderate drought improved over far eastern Tennessee and southeast Mississippi. But portions of East Tennessee continued to be dry, and the new pocket of extreme drought has bloomed as a red blob on the drought monitor map, with Rhea County as a bulls-eye.
Normal rainfall for Chattanooga is 55 inches annually, but the rainfall shortfall in metro Chattanooga is currently 15 inches as the year comes to a close, according to Andrew Joyner, Tennessee’s state climatologist, based in Johnson City. The rainfall deficit is even higher in northern Hamilton and Rhea counties.
In North Hamilton County, rainfall is around 17 or 18 inches below normal, while Rhea County’s deficit stands at 20 inches below, Joyner said in a phone interview, and it gets worse going north.