ATLANTA - The South has endured a double whammy of blistering heat and a lack of significant rainfall over the past few weeks, triggering what climate experts are calling a "flash drought."

The drought, which is affecting 45 million people in 14 states, is cracking farm soil, drying up ponds and raising the risk of wildfires.

“Typically we look at drought as being a slow onset, slow-developing type phenomenon compared to other disasters that rapidly happen, so this flash drought term came about,” said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center. “The idea is that it’s more of a rapidly developing drought situation compared to what we typically see.”

The relentless summer heat is forecast to finally come to an end over the next couple of days in many areas of the Deep South, the culmination of a brutal stretch of temperatures more typical of mid-July than early October.

Scores of records have been set this week with high temperatures soaring into the mid-to upper 90s from Texas to the Carolinas. In fact, from Tuesday through Thursday, 75 locations stretching from the Deep South to the Ohio Valley, eastern Great Lakes and Northeast either tied or set a new all-time October record high, the Weather Channel reported.

This week, most of the Deep South has been hotter than Death Valley, where highs were in the low 90s Wednesday and Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

“The same stubborn high-pressure ridging that has been predominant over the Southeast U.S. has brought record high temperatures, a drier air mass and lack of rainfall,” David Zierden, state climatologist for Florida, at Florida State University, told the Wall Street Journal. “So it is all tied together.”

The heat has been in place for weeks: The U.S. Drought Monitor, published weekly by a consortium of government agencies, said that "many areas had their warmest and driest September on record, accelerating the drought conditions in the region with dryness going back eight to 10 weeks now with associated high temperatures."

The rapid growth of this drought and continued dry weather into October are largely due to a stuck weather pattern that includes a stagnant bubble of high pressure over the Southeast and a jet stream that continues to pull moisture from northern Mexico into the Midwest without much intrusion into the Southeast, the Weather Channel said.

Story Date: October 5, 2019