The latest drought monitor that came out on Thursday April 30, 2026 starts to show us extreme drought on the zoomed in look. This extreme drought is a sliver in Virginia just east of Lynchburg, but it’s the fact that it’s there now. Meanwhile, for West Virginia all of our area is now under severe drought. This specific update does not include the rain that fell on Wednesday, April 29th. Either way, that type of rain will not affect this all that much as the majority of our area will still be under severe drought.
As we look at the upcoming weather pattern, more rain is in the forecast. Especially when we head Wednesday into Thursday, which unfortunately will not be shown on the next drought monitor either due to it falling after the cut-off on Tuesday. This rain will definitely help the drought, but will lead to a fairly rainy Wednesday. Most of this rain falls in the afternoon into the overnight hours and through most of the morning Thursday. This snapshot is what around 5:30 PM could look like with a big stripe of rain from Atlantic Canada down into Mississippi. Some thunder is also possible with some of this as there will be enough energy in the atmosphere to produce it.
The rain forecast over the next 7 days with the same model shows over an inch of most people with even areas further north and parts of Tazewell County receiving nearly 1.5 inches. Take the exact numbers with a grain of salt though, this just shows that we do get much needed rain across the majority of our area.
As we take a look at the full 7 day forecast, we can see the chance of showers return Monday before we have another dry day Tuesday. The potential for showers and storms return Wednesday and Thursday before we dry out again Friday. Thursday into next weekend also appear much cooler than our average high but we will throw some mild days in there. So get out and enjoy the early week while you can before Wednesday comes!
Watch the full forecast below!
