Vermont Drought Recovery Stalls, Hopefully Temporarily

Vermont's improvement from this summer and autumn's 
deep drought stalled in the past week, as only light
amounts of precipitation fell recently. An active
weather pattern coming up might lead to
further improvements, though. 

Vermont's drought conditions are pretty much the same as the previous week, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, issued Wednesday. 

The Monitor, which usually comes out Thursday but was a day early this week due to Thanksgiving, shows only the slightest glimmer of improvement. 

A small corner of southwest Vermont went from abnormally dry, which is one step below drought, to nothing at all, meaning water levels are sufficient. 

Otherwise, it's all the same as the week before. About 25 percent of the state mostly in the Northeast Kingdom, is still in severe drought. 

Most of the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains are in moderate drought. Most of the rest of the state is abnormally dry. That sliver of southwest Vermont, along with most of the Champlain Valley is out of danger. 

At least things didn't get worse. 

Precipitation was modest in Vermont last week, which explains the lack of change. The weekly report takes into consideration conditions running from last Wednesday to Tuesday. During that period less than a quarter inch of rain and melted snow fell across most of Vermont, though there was more than that in the mountains. 

A week of such light rainfall in late summer or early autumn likely would have worsened the drought, at least a little. But during the week ending on Tuesday, skies were mostly overcast, trees and other plants are now dormant and the weather was generally damp, so there wasn't much evaporation. 

In some places, melting snow added a little to the groundwater. All that means Vermont's drought conditions were able to hold steady.

Elsewhere in the Northeast, drought conditions improved ever so slightly in New Hampshire and Maine, and improved modestly in New York. 

OUTLOOK:

It still looks like we're in an active weather pattern, which means we have frequent chances of precipitation. Moderate amounts of rain fell Wednesday, which will be taken into account with next week's drought monitor, 

The amount of precipitation expected over the next week looks moderate, maybe sort of heavy in southern Vermont, depending on how storm tracks go. Much of the precipitation this coming week will come down as snow.  I'm not entirely sure if that's included in the Drought Monitor, or whether the snow is just "banked" and improves drought conditions when it melts.