Look around. Your grass is brown. The air is hot. The lakes are low. This season has been record-breakingly dry.

All across the country drought specialists have been monitoring Texas. The longhorn state has not seen a drought this bad since the 50’s.

Severe drought continues to plague the state, but recent reports are optimistic that Dallas-Fort Worth may have turned a corner. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a map highlighting dryness throughout the nation, Dallas emerged from drought on Feb. 2 for the first time since July. Many are celebrating the end to a long, dry season, but climatologists are hesitant to throw on their party hats just yet.

“There will always be the next drought,” Mark Svoboda, a climatologist at The National Drought Mitigation Center at The University of Nebraska, said in an email interview.

Let us not forget the days of rain we did have. Thunderstorms boomed in mid February, giving Dallas almost two inches of rain on Feb. 18. A few weeks early, DFW airport registered record breaking rain of more than 4 inches, with some areas around North Texas getting even more.

“Second wettest January on record, record breaking rain today, most rain on any January date – whew!” Colleen Coyle, a WFAA meteorologist, tweeted on Jan. 25.

The next drought may not be far off. A hot, dry spring could knock DFW back into treacherous drought territory. Though Dallas-Fort Worth was the first to emerge, it could also be the first to fall into drought condition again.

Nearly 60 percent of the state remains in severe or exceptional drought condition and this is causing serious side effects.

Lake Arlington’s normal water level is 550 feet, but in mid-January that level fell to as low as 540 feet. Many cities have implemented water restrictions. In Fort Worth, watering landscape was limited to two days per week in August and the restriction is still in effect according to the City of Fort Worth website.

Coppell re-instituted water restrictions in mid-December in accordance with the City of Dallas Drought Contingency Plan.

“I set the sprinklers to water less than I would have liked to, but felt I needed to be more water conscious,” Barbara Alexander, a Coppell resident, said.

“We have an amazing irrigation system in place that helps with the Texas conditions,” Wendy Holman, the public relations manager for the Dallas Arboretum, about how officials there have dealt with combating the drought, said.

Climatologists claim La Nina is partially to blame for the year’s intense drought.

“Interestingly there has been much more precipitation this winter in parts of the state than is typical when La Nina is present,” Stu Ostro, senior director of weather communications for The Weather Channel, said.

La Nina refers to a period of time when the sea surface temperature across the equatorial Eastern Central Pacific Ocean is lower than normal by 3-5 degrees Celsius. La Nina typically causes a wet period, the opposite effect of El Nino.

This year the increased precipitation La Nina promises, still was not enough to pull many parts of the state out of drought conditions.

“The two biggest causes for the drought were La Niña and bad luck,” John Nielsen-Gammon, Regents Professor at Texas A&M University and Texas State Climatologist, said in an email interview.

Scientists predict that luck will not be on Texas’ side in the future. Nielsen-Gammon foresees a dry summer. Though Dallas may stay out of a drought, southern parts of Texas will still be affected in the coming months.

For rural areas this means increased wildfire potential. In the wake of damaging fires last year in areas like Possum Kingdom, drought is not a forecast South Texas can bear to see. By the end of 2011 wildfire damages had cost the state nearly $250 million according to The Insurance Council of Texas. It is reported that the drought has cost the state more than $5 billion.

For other areas, brown, flaking trees, crippled by the conditions and wilting plants lead to a large reduction of foliage for both livestock and wildlife. Cattle numbers have decreased, contributing to the overall cost of the drought. Bird migration patterns have also been interrupted.

“There will be a pretty good lag before some of these environmental type of impacts have recovered fully,” Svoboda said.

Researches say the cause of recent extreme drought conditions are due to a lack in tropical storms and hurricanes. The last two summers have been uncharacteristically dry which has led to the state falling behind in precipitation.

“I now choose plants that are categorized as ‘drought tolerant’ instead of just selecting based on beauty,” Alexander said.

Texas is prone to drought partially due to its size and location. The state makes up about 7 percent of the southwestern region and its location on the Gulf of Mexico makes for dryer weather.

The Atlantic has been unusually warm since 1995, according to Nielsen-Gammon, which may have contributed to the intensity of the droughts Texas has been experiencing.

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the favorable moisture pattern continue into spring,” Svoboda said.

Courtesy of U.S. Drought Monitor Website