With April showers staying away, record hot temperatures in recent weeks, and rainfall deficits continuing to increase, Extreme Drought conditions have been expanding explosively across North Carolina this month.

With drought impacts becoming more apparent, including water restrictions being implemented in parts of the state, we recently assembled a panel of drought experts from the North Carolina Drought Management Advisory Council to discuss what’s going on with this ongoing drought, and what may happen next.

This included a drought primer from Assistant State Climatologist Corey Davis, water resource perspectives from DMAC chair Klaus Albertin at the NC Division of Water Resources, forestry and wildfire perspectives from Fire Environment Staff Forester Jamie Dunbar at NC Forest Service, and the current weather outlook presented by Senior Service Hydrologist Barrett Smith at NWS Raleigh, as well as bottom-line takeaways about the drought.

This post is a summary of that webinar, held on April 23, 2026. The full recording is available to watch on YouTube.

The Latest Drought Primer

While the past six weeks have been noticeably dry, the current dry spell actually dates back more than half a year, to the late summer of 2025. By mid-August, regular rainfall had ended, and a quiet end to the hurricane season along our coastline meant we missed out on the usual tropical contribution to our average precipitation.

A La Niña-affected winter brought the typical dry conditions in our part of the country, and despite more frequent rain events in February, we were still left with widespread Severe Drought entering the spring.

Since mid-March, a summer-like weather pattern with high pressure overhead has meant unseasonably warm temperatures and little rainfall. That has helped drought intensify, and more than 40% of the state is now in Extreme Drought – the second-most severe category in the US Drought Monitor’s classification system.

As defined based on historical percentiles, Extreme Drought conditions tend to occur 2 to 5% of the time, or every 20 to 50 years, on average, at any given location and time of year.

Parts of far western North Carolina were most recently in that category during the 2016-17 drought that included a damaging fall fire season, while the last widespread Extreme Drought elsewhere was during our state’s worst drought on record in 2007 and 2008.

While this drought’s emergence may seem sudden, and a hot and dry April has indeed accelerated its development, it’s truly a long-term phenomenon by now. Since last August, our precipitation deficits have steadily increased to more than 12 inches across almost the entire state, with barely half of the normal precipitation in many areas.

This calendar year is also off to a record dry start in places like Charlotte, Monroe, Raleigh, and Laurel Springs, with each site more than six inches below normal since January 1. That tells the story of the lack of meaningful recharge over the winter, and the continuing dryness so far this spring.

Naturally, this historic dryness and the return of Extreme Drought are drawing comparisons to the 2007 event, and the overall rainfall deficits are indeed similar. Raleigh’s current shortfall since mid-August stands at 16.35 inches, surpassing the maximum deficit of 12.73 inches in December 2007. And at 15.11 inches below normal in this drought, Charlotte is closing in on its peak deficit of 17.17 inches in 2007.

However, the biggest difference between these two events is their timing: the 2007 drought rapidly advanced during a hot, dry summer, while our current drought has taken shape mostly in the cool season, when evaporation rates and water demands are lower.

That’s why we’re not yet seeing those 2007-level impacts, despite the similar rainfall deficits. For instance, Falls Lake is currently 2.76 feet below its target, a far cry from its record low of 8.88 feet down in November 2007.

The main impacts being felt now include brown, slow-growing lawns and crops struggling to take root without supplemental irrigation, and amid low topsoil moisture levels that have taken a nosedive in recent weeks, as measured by our ECONet.

Water Resource Perspectives

One of the first signs of the worsening drought this winter, and one of the most alarming signs of its severity now, is the streamflow status. With minimal rain over the past six weeks, streamflows are at record lows for this time of year at nearly all USGS monitoring gauges statewide.

As another sign of the entrenched dryness, groundwater levels are also very low. Among the North Carolina Division of Water Resources’ 85 Drought Indicator Wells, 20 are now at record low monthly levels, spanning from Bryson City in the west to Elizabeth City in the east.

Lakes and reservoirs are also feeling the impacts due to the lack of rain and upstream inflows. Along with the declining levels in Falls Lake, which is the main water supply for Raleigh and surrounding areas, Lake Norman near Charlotte is also more than two feet below its target level.

However, thanks to a bit of forward thinking during the emerging drought last fall, these lakes aren’t as low as they could have been. Many operators held their lakes at higher-than-normal levels over the winter to ease the challenge of the spring fill, just in case drought persisted like it has.

Still, some are struggling to reach their summer targets. Despite starting March more than five feet above normal, Fontana Lake in far western North Carolina is now more than 7 feet below its target, which continues to increase until mid-May.

While these reservoirs – by design – have months of water left in reserve, some local towns and water systems are already implementing water restrictions to make sure those supplies last in the event of a prolonged drought this summer.

Earlier this week, the City of Raleigh implemented mandatory once-per-week outdoor watering limits, while Rocky Mount is requesting similar but voluntary conservation efforts. Charlotte Water has also requested voluntary conservation.

For more information about any restrictions affecting you, check with your local water utility, as each has different conservation triggers determined by its Water Shortage Response Plan.

Even without an official request from your local utility, smart and cost-saving conservation steps to implement include watering outdoors before 10 am to limit evaporation, fixing leaking faucets, and waiting until dishwashers and washing machines are full before running them.

Forestry and Wildfire Perspectives

Climatologically speaking, spring is the primary fire season in North Carolina, as the still-dormant fuels coming out of the winter burn easily before the vegetation has fully greened up and leafed out. Drought tends to make these fuels even drier and our fire seasons even worse, and this spring has been no exception.

According to preliminary statistics from NC Forest Service, there have been 4,224 total wildfire incidents on state and private lands in 2026 through April 21. That’s a significant increase from the 10-year average of 2,614 incidents through the first four months of the year.

The largest incidents so far include the 1,410-acre East Tower fire on the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, this month’s 748-acre Rosindale Road fire in Bladen County, and the late March Cane Creek fire that burned 574 acres in Wilkes County.

While our spring fire seasons are often active, several weather factors have made this one even worse. The ongoing drought is keeping dead fuels like fallen tree branches at record dry levels, especially in Helene-damaged areas that are still strewn with debris and difficult to access. Several frosty nights have also slowed the green-up process as live vegetation comes out of its winter dormancy. And windy days have helped spread newly started fires.

Those factors all prompted the North Carolina Forest Service to implement a statewide burn ban on March 28, and it has been in effect since then. This covers all outdoor burning, including backyard debris burns, campfires, and fireworks.

So far, this burn ban is having an effect at reducing new fire starts and freeing up local resources to combat ongoing incidents and move across the state to assist with other fires.

Burn bans are common in Extreme Drought since the dry landscape makes fires even easier to ignite and spread uncontrollably. Similar statewide burn bans were issued during the 2007 drought — first between August 21 and September 18, and again beginning on October 15 — although that event’s primary fire activity happened the following spring, including the long-lasting Evans Road fire that began in June 2008.

The potential for large coastal fires is still present this spring, and the current situation in south Georgia with several large incidents including the 17,000-acre Pineland Road fire shows how impactful the drought and how volatile the fuels are right now. Any thunderstorms in the next few months could be both a blessing and a curse, bringing needed rain but also the possibility of fire-starting lightning strikes.

That’s why our coastline remains at an above-normal risk of significant wildland fires in May, and why the burn ban will likely continue until more rain arrives to reduce the fire danger and get any ongoing fires under control.

Current Weather Outlook

The latest forecast offers a bit of hope, but nothing close to drought-busting rainfall before the end of the month. Over the next week, we’ll see a pair of cold fronts move through: the first approaching on Saturday, and the second arriving by next Tuesday.

Along with offering some breaks from the summer-like temperatures, these should bring rain showers across much of the state. Current forecasts are showing weekly totals of a half-inch to an inch of rain. That’s certainly an improvement over where we’ve been, although it’s still drier than our weekly average rainfall at this time of year.

Beyond that, the Climate Prediction Center’s 8- to 14-day outlook through the first week of May tilts toward above-normal precipitation, and their three-month outlook for May through July leans wetter for eastern North Carolina.

While we track our developing drought, we’re also watching the developing ENSO pattern in the Pacific, as that could have a big impact on us later this year. After two consecutive La Niña winters, it’s now very likely that we’ll shift to the opposite phase, El Niño, over the summer.

Initially, that may not be a good thing for our drought. Because it strengthens upper-level winds over the tropics that can shear apart developing storms, El Niño events tend to see a reduction in Atlantic tropical activity, as predicted in initial outlooks by Colorado State University and others. Like last fall, that could deny us the tropical rainfall we expect at that time of year.

By late fall and early winter, more relief could arrive as El Niño’s primary atmospheric impacts kick in. A stronger jet stream anchored to our south should bring moisture and storm systems our way, which should mean wetter weather for at least a few months.

Whether we’re stuck in a drought or welcoming back the rain, one way you can help us track conditions is by joining CoCoRaHS as a volunteer precipitation observer. In addition to making daily rainfall observations, CoCoRaHS observers can share weekly Condition Monitoring Reports that describe on-the-ground impacts to validate our statewide drought assessments.

The Bottom Line

April is shaping up as a month for the record books for all the wrong reasons, currently on pace to be the warmest April on record in Asheville, Charlotte, and Raleigh, and one of the top-ten driest as well, with less than an inch of rain in most areas.

Simply put, without rain soon, our current trajectory will continue to see expanding Extreme Drought and perhaps even the emergence of Exceptional Drought, as depicted by the 120-day Standardized Precipitation Index — one of our most useful drought indicators that puts recent rainfall amounts in the framework of historical percentiles, per the US Drought Monitor approach.

Any rain would help slow the degradation, and a few wetter months as CPC hints at this summer could begin to alleviate the impacts. Of course, ongoing dryness through the summer would continue the recent trend of drought expansion, and that would make our cool-season deficits the sort of head start that we didn’t get back in 2007.

Thankfully, we’re not facing those 2007-level impacts just yet, again thanks to the different timing of each drought’s development. The emerging El Niño is also a light at the end of the tunnel — albeit a distant one — that we didn’t have in 2007, which ended with a dry La Niña winter that caused Exceptional Drought to linger into 2008.

If and when a wetter pattern emerges this year, it will take several months of consistently above-normal precipitation to make a major dent in our current deficits. With drought likely here for the long haul, it will take all of us to manage the impacts using best practices and lessons from past droughts.

That includes following guidance regarding water usage and burn bans, being aware of where our water comes from and how we’re using it in our own households, and being prepared to absorb the letdown of brown lawns and stunted gardens for a few months.

While this drought persists, you can check your local drought status on the NC DMAC website, track fire danger forecasts on our public-facing map, sign up to receive our weekly update infographics by email, and subscribe to our Climate Blog to receive the latest weather news.