Drought conditions worsening across state; several areas seeing exceptional drought conditions

Another week with worsening drought conditions in the Miami Valley and across the state of Ohio, with parts of the state seeing extreme and exceptional drought conditions.

Storm Center 7 Meteorologist Austin Chaney is tracking these conditions and will have the latest impacts LIVE on News Center 7 at 5:30.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks ]

TRENDING STORIES:

• Case involving hit-and-run that killed 14-year-old dismissed following suspect’s death
• 2 men arrested in connection to shooting death of 12-year-old girl
• Wife of Springfield company’s president killed in crash on I-70

Moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions are spreading across more of the Miami Valley, according to Storm Center 7 Weather Specialist Nick Dunn. We saw abnormally dry conditions double in size and moderate drought conditions increase from 13 percent to 19 percent. This is due to a week with no rain and increasingly hot weather, which are two ingredients to accelerate drought conditions.

Given no substantial rain in the forecast, drought conditions may continue to worsen in the coming weeks. When we look at the last 30 days, Preble County continues to run above normal on rainfall, and the corridor from Richmond to Germantown continues to remain healthy in terms of rainfall with over 200 percent of normal. Other spots in the Miami Valley are running 50-75 percent of normal, which is not good for crops as they enter the mature stages.

Some big news across the state this week. For the first time in state history, an exceptional drought is being found in southeast Ohio around Athens and Meigs Counties. This is very rare since drought tracking began weekly in 2000.

Rainfall over the last 30 days in this region is less than 25 percent of normal, which added in with the heat is expediting serious drought conditions in that area. Trees are very stressed and losing leaves quickly in parts of the Buckeye State, which will definitely play a role in how our Fall color turns out.

Extreme drought conditions have expanded by over 18,000 percent in the last two weeks when looking at a geographical area. More than one-third of Ohio is in some form of drought condition as of this week.

Columbus is still on pace for the driest summer ever as they are now more than 7 inches below normal just since June 1.

In Dayton, while not the driest summer ever by any means, we are running over 2 inches below normal. Safe to say that everyone needs rain and soon! River levels in parts of Ohio are running low and crop yields are quite poor.

You can see the climate data compiled by the State of Ohio Climate Office here.

[SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter ]