Last column, I went big on El Niño as potentially being an inordinately powerful thunderstorm spawner. Talk of upcoming downpours seemingly flies in the face of this week’s follow-up report, highlighting our spooky descent into drought conditions, always worsened by long stretches of El Niño world-class heat.

As of this week, the U.S. Drought Monitor assesses our domain and adjacent South Jersey as being severely droughted upon.

Ocean County itself has advanced from D1 (moderate) drought conditions to D2 (severe) levels.

There is a high potential those warnings will reach D3 (extreme) by the end of June.