Some officials hoping for tropical storm to ease dry conditions

Tim Reed frequently checks weather forecasts hoping for find a weak tropical storm taking aim for the Gulf Coast.

Reed, Franklin County Coordinator for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, does not want a tropical storm packing high winds to strike coastal cities. He would like to see a storm loaded with rain move out of the Gulf of Mexico and make its way to the Tennessee Valley.

"We're hurting for rain. We've got some fields and pastures that are in really bad shape. A tropical storm could go a long way to getting us out of this drought," Reed said.

The Shoals is more than 17 inches below rainfall for the year. Many cattle farmers have been forced to reduce their herds or sell all of their animals when their pastures wilt and farm ponds go dry.

Corn, cotton and soybean farmers and backyard gardeners have been hurt by the drought. Many lawns have withered.

"We've got some cornfields that are probably not going to come back even if we get some rain. They have been hurt too much to ever recover and have a normal yield," said Randall Armstrong, extension coordinator for Lauderdale County.

"What we need is a tropical system to move in here and stall and rain steady for two or three days," said Coleen Vansant, information manager for the Alabama Forestry Commission. "We don't need floods, just several consecutive days of good steady, slow rain."

Dry conditions have forced the forestry commission to ban outdoor burning, including campfires, in north Alabama.

Vansant said conditions are prime for massive wildfires in north Alabama.

Much of the Tennessee Valley, including portions of Lauderdale, Colbert and Franklin counties and all of Lawrence, is in an exceptional drought -- the most severe category --- according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Robert Boyd, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Huntsville, said a succession of high pressure systems in the atmosphere have kept rain at bay over Alabama. He said the high pressure has prevented weather systems from the west from making it into Alabama. As those weather systems have stalled over the West, flooding has been reported in Texas and other states.

"If the high pressure that has been over Alabama had been further east, we would have been in the wet band and would have been getting a lot of the rain Texas has been getting," Boyd said.

Boyd said the high-pressure dome is beginning to move into the Atlantic Ocean, which will improve Alabama's chances for rain this week.

Rain is possible today and likely Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, Boyd said. "It's going to be scattered showers and probably not a lot of rain. But anything we get will help."

Boyd said forecasters are optimistic afternoon showers and thunderstorms will become more common in the Tennessee Valley. "If you start getting scattered showers every day, the rainfall will begin to add up over a period of time. It might not break a drought, but it can keep the drought from getting any worse."

Dennis Sherer can be reached at 740-5746 or dennis.sherer@timesdaily.com.