Tropics Update - Saturday Evening 8/28

Hurricane Danielle will continue to move into the north Atlantic and weaken, so now all eyes are on Earl and Fiona. The steering winds that deflected Danielle away from the east coast will be gone for the upcoming workweek. This means that the track of Earl could easily shift farther west but it's way too early to speculate how far. The same holds true for Fiona (not officially named yet), which should become a tropical storm tomorrow or Monday. This is something that we will be carefully tracking during the next few days, so I encourage you to keep a close eye to the forecast!

Tropics Update - Friday 11:50 AM

Danielle is a powerful category four hurricane. Luckily we are still anticipating Danielle to turn towards the cool North Atlantic waters and weaken. Tropical Storm Earl will continue its westward track and could potentially become a category three hurricane next week. The tropical wave behind Earl should become Tropical Storm Fiona by this weekend. It's still way too early to speculate if either of these storms will make landfall in the United States.

Drought Update Thursday

Rain events over the past week (this map shows rain over the last seven days), especially in western parts of the state, have chiseled away at the some of the drought in Virginia.

This week, about 16% less of the state is considered to be in drought (Moderate to Severe). Our Abnormally Dry region is shrinking, too (this week 11% less than last week). However, much of central Virginia along I-64 and I-95 is still severely dry with no significant change in the drought conditions. Rain chances are nil over the next week in central Virginia. Today as a cold front moves through the state, though, a few isolated showers and storms are possible, but certainly not enough to impact our current drought status.