Continued dry weather has forced the city of Vicksburg to extend its citywide burn ban until further notice, Fire Chief Charles Atkins said.

“We haven’t had any rain, and we’ve got crunchy (dry grass),” he said.

Warren County Emergency Management Director John Elfer said he has not discussed extending the county’s burn ban, but added “we have been under a statewide burn ban with no exceptions, and a statewide ban supersedes the city and county bans.”

He said the statewide ban was signed Oct. 6 by Gov. Phil Bryant. The penalty for violating the ban is a fine from $100 to $500.

Vicksburg and Warren County have been without significant rain since August, and like the majority of the state is under severe drought conditions, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Drought monitor.

The reason for the dry conditions is a stationary high-pressure ridge over the central part of the country for the last one to two months, said Nicholas Fenner, meteorologist with the National Weather Service Jackson Office.

“It’s just a persistent ridge of high pressure over the central or southeastern parts of the country over the last few months,” he said, adding even when rainy conditions occurred, the system moved back in the area, keeping temperatures high “and the consequence of that (is) the soil moisture bakes out of the ground and reduces our chances of rain going forward.”

Based on current forecasts, Fenner said, conditions will remain dry during the weekend and into the first few days of next week.

“We’re not going to have any kind of system capable of bringing rain until possibly mid to late next week,” he said. “We’ll have a cold front entering the area (but) at this point, it doesn’t look like there’s much chance for rain, at least very significant rain with it; just kind of a real low end chance of, 10 to 15 percent at the end of next week near the area.

“There’s some kind of indication we’ll see a (weather) pattern change toward the middle of November, but no indication of lots of rain.”