The federal Climate Prediction Center's June-through-August drought forecast, updated last week, calls for improved conditions across the western half of North Carolina and Upstate South Carolina.

That includes the Charlotte region, where the drought has been most stubborn. Mecklenburg and surrounding counties are among 17 N.C. counties still labeled in extreme drought. Despite regular rain, the southern Piedmont is the state's driest region over the past six months.

On average, the area has lost more than an inch of normal rainfall a month since January 2007.

A Catawba River drought-advisory group that meets today will evaluate forecasts and current conditions. It might recommend whether water restrictions in the region should change.

In early April, most Charlotte-area communities kept mandatory conservation but allowed once-weekly lawn irrigation, saying they would re-evaluate conditions in late May.

Long-range forecasts favor neither above- nor below-average rain for the Carolinas over the next three months. If normal patterns resume, summer showers and thunderstorms would help fill reservoirs.

But water use also goes up as temperatures rise. Plants pull more moisture from the soil and lakes lose more water to evaporation. Those factors, the prediction center says, "make the forecast anything but a sure bet."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gives the Charlotte region only a 3 percent to 6 percent chance of getting enough rain to end the drought within six months. The area rates a much better chance -- 30 percent to 40 percent -- that rainfall will ease the drought.

Charlotte's total for the year is 3.3 inches below normal, but it's off more than 18 inches since January 2007. Streamflows in the Charlotte region are improving but still at only at 45 percent of normal, Duke Energy reported Friday. Groundwater levels, which respond slowly to rainfall, are rising steadily.