The Vermont Drought Has Gotten Much Worse

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor says all of
Vermont is now in drought.  Parts of the 
the state have been moved from
moderate to severe drought 
Severe drought is the brighter
shade of orange in this map. 

The drought in Vermont has gone statewide and has deepened, according to the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor. 

Every last corner of the state is now in drought, compared to a little more than half the state in last week's report. 

 Last week, northwest and southwest Vermont were just "abnormally dry" a sort of precursor to drought.  Now, everyone in Vermont is officially experiencing drought.   

Even worse, parts of Vermont went from "moderate" drought to "severe" drought. Those severe areas are across central and northeastern parts of the state.

Typically, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, severe droughts cause fill kills, wildlife moves to farms, trees become brittle and susceptible to insects, groundwater is declining and irrigation ponds go dry.   

The worsening drought situation comes despite some rainfall in northern Vermont.  That rainfall wasn't particularly heavy, and was followed by more dry weather with low humidity. 

The rest of northern New England has gotten worse, too.  Half of New Hampshire is now in severe drought for the first time in this long dry spell. The severe drought zone in the Granite State is across the northern half of the state.

In Maine, severe drought spread from the coastline to across almost the entire southern half of the state. 

This has truly been a flash drought, one that develops within weeks instead of months. It's incredible  that we went from super soggy in early June to deepening drought by early to mid August. And that drought is clearly getting worse.

Despite a somewhat encouraging forecast tonight through Saturday. 

As I noted in this morning's post, we at least have some rain coming over the next few days. That's especially good since today's weather is basically a hot, dry blowdryer, with arid air, gusty winds and strong sunshine at least until late afternoon. 

Updated forecasts indicate much of Vermont could receive more than an inch of rain by late Saturday night. That's a slight improvement over earlier forecasts. However, the least amount of rain still looks like it will be eastern Vermont, which needs the rain the most. 

Most of Vermont has had four inches less rain than it should have over the past 60 days, so even an inch of rain won't help that much. Especially since little rain is expected in Vermont for at least a week, probably more, after the rain we do get over the next couple of days. 

RAINFALL STATS SHOCKING

We have more details on Vermont rainfall during meteorological summer, which ran from June 1 through August 31.  As the National Weather Service office in South Burlington tells us, we went from super soaker summers in 2023 and 2024 to dry faucets this year.  

Montpelier just had its driest summer with just 5.45 inches of rain. Last year, Montpelier had its third wettest summer, with 17.02 inches of rain. The disastrous summer of 2023 in Montpelier was their wettest summer, with 22.72 inches. 

Montpelier's records go back to 1948 

St. Johnsbury really takes the cake for most extremes between years. Last summer, they had 29.67 inches of rain, by far the most precipitation in a single summer.

Just one year later, here in 2025, St. Johnsbury had its second driest summer with just 5.22 inches of rain. St. Johnsbury has a very long continuous period of record, too. They started keeping climate stats there in 1894. 

September isn't off to a good start. The long term pattern suggests potential continued dry weather through the season.  Time to really start hoping for some soaking nor'easters.