Drought conditions continue to rage across the Carolinas. While we had our normal dose of rain all year, fall has turned off the faucet. Since September 1st, most of the area has only seen about 5” of rain. Average for the fall season is over 10”. Scientists, like North Carolina’s Jared Rennie at the National Center for Environmental Information, blame La Nina for the abnormally dry conditions. La Nina is an ocean circulation pattern in the Pacific. When the trade winds are very strong, it pushes the warmer water, leaving a cold pool of ocean currents off the South American coast. This ocean circulation interacts with our jet stream or path of storminess. It sends the jet stream farther north, taking the storms from the Pacific Northwest to the Northeast, often missing our region in the Southeast.
