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The Southeastern United States (SEUS) climate region experienced a marked transition from excessively wet conditions early in 2016 to an exceptional drought during the Autumn. The unusually warm and dry conditions led to numerous wildfires, including the devastating Gatlinburg, Tennessee (TN) firestorm on 28–29 November. The evolution of soil wetness anomalies are highlighted through soil moisture percentiles derived from an instance of NASA’s Land Information System (LIS). A 33-year soil moisture climatology simulation combined with daily, real-time county-based distributions illustrate how soil moisture began above the 96th percentile early in 2016, and declined to below the 2nd percentile in many locales by late November.
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Case et al. (2017) studied this question.
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