Not So Moist

November raw anomaly data (orange)

In November 2018, the top four graphs show that raw values of moisture anomalies moved up away from the moist values of October, but not as far as earlier drought values.
For temperature anomalies, daily maximum and subsoil rose again, while, daily minimum fell from its extremely high value

 Fully smoothed data (red)

At this time, Manilla was entering an extreme drought. Each of the smoothed climate anomalies shown on these graphs contributed to the drought to some degree, and with more or less lag.

By May 2018, the last date for which data can be fully smoothed (as described below), most variables had not yet peaked in their contribution. Several more months of data will reveal the complete cycle into and out of drought.
The anomaly of daily maximum temperature (x-axis, all graphs) had already peaked in March 2018. (In the 2002 drought daily maximum temperature had peaked after the peak of minimum rainfall, not before.)
In May 2018 the rainfall anomaly was still becoming more negative, to a record low value of minus 28.3 mm . June and July rainfall anomalies seemed likely to be similar after smoothing.
Cloudiness was decreasing towards a minimum (perhaps in August 2018) without becoming much less cloudy than normal.
Dew point anomaly was still decreasing, and seemed likely to reach a record low value about August.
The anomaly of daily temperature range had been at a (high) level characteristic of drought since the winter of 2017. It had changed little since, and seemed likely to peak in June 2018 without approaching the record value of July 2002.
The anomaly of daily minimum temperature has a cryptic relation to drought. In this case, the value peaked sharply in February 2018 before falling rapidly. It may have reached a minimum about August 2018.
The anomaly of subsoil temperature was rising rapidly in May 2018, and seemed likely to peak about July, lagging four months behind the daily maximum temperature anomaly.

Note:

Fully smoothed data – Gaussian smoothing with half-width 6 months – are plotted in red, partly smoothed data uncoloured, and raw data for the last data point in orange. January data points are marked by squares.
Blue diamonds and the dashed blue rectangle show the extreme values in the fully smoothed data record since September 1999.

Normal values are based on averages for the decade from March 1999.* They appear on these graphs as a turquoise (turquoise) circle at the origin (0,0). A range of anomalies called “normal” is shown by a dashed rectangle in aqua (aqua). For values in degrees, the assigned normal range is +/-0.7°; for cloudiness, +/-7%; for monthly rainfall, +/-14 mm.

 * Normal values for rainfall are based on averages for the 125 years beginning 1883.