SMITH COUNTY (KYTX) -- Smith County may be out of drought status completely by the end of the week according to reps with the National Weather Service. Rain from last week has climate experts predicting the area is moist enough to no longer be considered abnormally dry.
"This year it's been really great. If you have a garden, you've had a lot of work, but you've had a lot of satisfaction," Cindy Steele, owner of Steele's Feed and Seed store, said.
Steele says the drought last year caused some of her sales to suffer. "You had invested in your inventory, and couldn't move it, so you were stuck with inventory for a year," Steele said.
Those far-reaching effects especially hit the cattle industry. Fewer people bought hay and products relating to it, like hay twine.
Steele is happy that's not the case this year. "You can always do something with rain, you sure can't do something without it," she said.
And it's amazing what difference a year makes. "Some of these guys are saying I've made so much hay this year, I haven't made this much hay in several years combined," Chad Gulley, with the Smith County AgriLife Extension office, said.
Currently Smith County sits at a "D-0" stage, that's abnormally dry, versus "D-5"-- the most severe stage of drought. "
"Parts of Texas are still pretty dry, but they are probably in better shape than they have been. However, we're not out of the woods yet as far as the drought is concerned," Gulley said.
Smith County is still 4 inches short of the amount of rain it should receive by July in a normal year. But as of last week, it's making big strides.
