Climate conditions in the southeast USA are affected by sea surface temperatures (SSTs) near the equator off the western coast of South America. Typically, when SSTs in this area are in a warm phase, also called El Niño, winters in the southeast USA are cooler and wetter than normal and the opposite is true when SSTs are in a cool phase. Research was done to apply this relationship between SST and climate to predict drought indices for three states – Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. For 209 weather stations in the 3-state region, we categorized historic climate data according to SST phase and used bootstrapping methods to generate >100 realizations of daily weather data for each SST phase. These daily weather data were use to compute probability distribution functions for the lawn and garden drought index (LGI). This index is computed as a tapered, weighted total of the precipitation for the previous 21 days. Forecasts are presented as maps showing the probability of mild (LGI < -0.5), moderate (LGI < -1.0), or severe drought (LGI < -1.5) at 14, 28, 56, and 84 days.