New England Drought Not Over; Snapshot Before Rain Was Bad

It is nice to see at least the surface of the ground underfoot looking moist after all that rain earlier this week,  but it still is going to take a lot of wet weather to dig ourselves out of the drought that has developed since spring in Vermont and the rest of New England. 

The U.S. Drought Monitor has all but the extreme
western part of Vermont in drought. The yellow
zone is merely "abnormally dry"

The latest weekly U.S. Drought Monitor issued Thursday showed worsening conditions in the Northeast.

This snapshot of conditions was taken just before the rain began to fall in earnest later on Tuesday.  That means there might be some improvement noted in next week's report, but I imagine not much. 

Here in Vermont, the Drought Monitor indicated every corner of the state was at the very least abnormally dry. 

Severe drought, which a week earlier had been limited to the upper Connecticut River Valley, expanded across almost all of Vermont east of the Green Mountains north of roughly Route 4 between Rutland and White River Junction. 

Drought conditions covered all of Vermont except for extreme western portions of the state, which were "just" abnormally dry. 

A little over 76 percent of Vermont was officially in a drought as of Tuesday, compared to about 62 percent a week earlier. 

To give you an anecdotal look at how far we have to go, I went out to my 15" raised beds a few hours after the rain ended Wednesday.  The beds are 15 inches deep. One fallow one was dust all the way to the bottom before the rains.

I dug down and found the moisture from the rains extended downward only about two or at most three    Below that, it was still just dust and dry soil. 

Given that, and the fact the dry conditions aren't as bad in St. Albans as they are further east, you can see that we need a LOT more rain to make progress in getting ground water levels up to snuff for the winter. 

Still it was nice to see a trickle of water running in the tiny brook that we call the Woof River next to my house. There'd been no water in it since August. Since I don't have much in the way of garden produce to come, I can finally put my hoses away for the winter, I think. 

Unfortunately, the weather forecasts don't call for a  huge amount of rain. Anything will help, but we need some more super soakers. Slow, steady, long lasting rains would be best, but that's not in the cards right away.    

It might be a little hard to see in this photo, but after my rain
gauge collected 2.85 inches of rain, moisture only 
extended two or three inches downward into the soil in
my St. Albans, Vermont raised beds. It was
still dry below that. 

Some rain is falling today in Vermont, but it will only amount to perhaps 0.3 inches in most places. 

Small storms are in the pipeline, but at least heading into mid-October, none of these systems probably won't be able to grab deep moisture from the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf of Mexico to give us some good drenchings. 

It's not just us that are having a dry year. Overall, the United States has had a few wet years in a row, with relatively few places having a drought at any given time. 

This year has turned out differently.  We know about the drought encompassing most of the West, with all those wildfires burning. Some relief came to the Pacific Northwest over the past few days, but that's it. 

Meanwhile, a "flash drought" has developed over the Plains. Droughts usually come on rather slowly, but a flash drought happens sometimes when the rain abruptly shuts off and temperatures soar far above normal. This kind of thing is regarded as more likely with climate change. 

In the Plains, recent bouts of near record warmth and hot, dry winds have caused this flash drought. The outlook through mid-month in this region is continued near record warmth with very little rain. 

There are a lot of  Americans out there doing rain dances.