Last Week's Rain Didn't Ease Vermont Drought, Says Weekly Report

The new weekly U.S. Drought Report issued
this morning is unchanged from last week.
Red in central Vermont is extreme drought.
The orange covering almost all the rest
of the state depicts severe drought. 

Lately, many of us have waited with bated breath to see the weekly Thursday U.S. Drought Report to find out how badly our big drought is punishing Vermont.  

The one that came out this morning show us last week's rain didn't help at all with the drought. 

On the bright side, things didn't get worse, either. Instead, drought conditions in Vermont are exactly the same as the week before. 

The same zone of extreme drought covers central Vermont. Most of the rest of the state is in severe drought, just like the week before.

Also like the previous week, only the extreme northwest and southeast corners of the state are "merely" in moderate drought. 

Drought conditions were also unchanged in most of the rest of New England, with the worst conditions in central Vermont, central New Hampshire in southern Maine. 

The Drought Monitor people explain it this way:

"In New England, heavier rains of mostly one to locally four inches were only enough to put the brakes on the developing drought, as streamflows decreased substantially after the event and rains struggled to infiltrate deeper into soils. Additionally, significant short-term rainfall deficits still exist in many areas despite the rain."

One way to look at it is to see what happened to Lake Champlain after the rain. If soil moisture had been adequate, last week's rain would have created more runoff and rivers would have risen noticeably. The Lake Champlain lake level would have also risen by perhaps a few inches.  

Instead, the lake level only went from 93.03 inches to 93.13 inches. That's barely a blip and still a remarkably low lake level. As of Wednesday, it was back down to 93.07 feet. 

The Drought Monitor measures conditions as of Tuesday, two days before the report is released. It hasn't rained in Vermont since last Friday, and no rain is in the forecast until at least Tuesday. So, chances are, the drought will go back to its worsening trend after this week.

As you'd expect, Vermont and surrounding areas are still increasingly suffering from this drought.  

According to Vermont Public, the state's Department of Environmental Conservation has received reports of more than 400 wells running dry since August. That's four times as many as they received from 2016 to 2025. 

About 40 percent of Vermonters get their water from a private well. But information on what share of that total is from spring-fed wells or dug wells. 

Drilling a new well can cost $20,000, and there's little public assistance for people who need a new well. This is turning into a financial crisis as well as a water crisis for many Vermont households. 

Vermont ski areas are warily watching the drought, WPTZ reports. At Sugarbush in Warren, the snowmaking ponds have enough water to start the season. But the resort relies on the Mad River to withdraw water for snowmaking. The river has to be above a certain level for that to happen. Right now, the river is far too low to allow the resort to pull water from it. 

Sugarbush officials are hoping some good late autumn rains arrive to fill up the Mad River, and the snowmaking ponds. 

Jay Peak has invested in snowmaking equipment that uses less water than old systems but makes about the same amount of snow. 

Climate change overall is making New England wetter. But paradoxically, droughts are worsening, too. 

Much of the rain we do get comes in short, sharp, extreme events, and the long, slow wet periods we used to see are less frequent. For instance, almost all the Vermont rain in September fell in just four or five days. 

Also, weather patterns seem to be getting "stuck" one way or another, wet or dry, for longer periods. The climate is warmer than it used to be, too. Warmer weather tends to increase evaporation, allowing droughts to develop more quickly and become more severe. 

That's what happened in Vermont this year. The drought started developing in July, one of the warmest on record. Then it abruptly, seriously deepened in mid-August amid a record breaking and extraordinarily arid heat wave.

September was also very warm and dry, which exacerbated things even further. October is opening the same way - warm and dry.  

Long range forecasts offer us Vermonters little encouragement. It still looks like an occasional series of light rainfalls might start around October 9, but so far, each "storm" looks modest and would do little if anything to ease the drought. 

Two Cool Satellite Photos, One Of Them For Us In Vermont

A satellite view of the Pacific Ocean Friday shows
two graceful looking storms and a giant number 7
between British Columbia and Alaska's Aleutian Islands. 

 I'm always fascinated by satellite photos showing how clouds behave, and how the landscape below the clouds change with the season, or change with different weather.  

There's two cool examples here. 

LUCKY #7

The first was taken Friday over the Pacific Ocean. The two storm are interesting enough as they are. 

Both of them - one off the California coast, another larger one northwest of Hawaii, feature two graceful cold fronts hanging south and southwestward from the  main storm. 

As you can see, most of the northern Pacific Ocean is cloudy in the photo, except for the giant number 7 shaped area of clear skies. That's what everybody honed in on the most. It didn't signify any particular weather, other than a gap between storms, but it was a pretty unusual pattern nonetheless. 

The storm to the right of the seven looks vaguely like a six, so I guess the Pacific Ocean was in a 76 mood on Friday. Whatever that means.  Seventy-six more storms to hit the West Coast before spring? California certainly hopes not. 

BIRD'S EYE VIEW, END OF WINTER 

Visible satellite photo from Saturday afternoon shows
an unseasonable lack of show in the valleys of 
western Vermont, not a great snow cover elsewhere,
and if you look closely, very little ice in the lakes. 

The second photo is much closer to home. It was taken Saturday afternoon, a rare crystal clear day during such an overcast winter. 

Again click on the photo to make it bigger and easier to see. 

First, you can see the paltry snow cover for this time of year in and around Vermont. 

The Champlain Valley and the southeastern tip of Vermont are devoid of snow.   The snow does cover most of the rest of Vermont, but it looks weak, like there's plenty of bare spots in the low elevations.

Ice on Lake Champlain should be peaking by now, but it still shows dark blue in the visible satellite photo, indicating a serious lack of ice. 

You can also see the eastern end of Lake Ontario, the Finger Lakes in western New York. a fairly big chunk of Lake Winnipesaukee (SP) in New Hamphire and Sebago Lake in Maine all free of ice.

The only parts of the satellite photo that looks normal for this time of year is north of the St. Lawrence River in Canada. There, we see frozen lakes and what appears to be a pretty substantial snow cover. 

The lame snow cover in New England should retreat further this week during yet another expected warm spell. Following a brief return to winter Thursday and Friday, more premature spring weather seems due. 

Vermont Thin Ice Danger: Even "Reliable" Lakes Dangerous; Family Rescued On Lake Memphremagog

This is a still from a Newport Police body cam as officer
Tanner Jacobs raced to help rescue a three year old
who fell through the ice with his family on 
Lake Mempremagog last Saturday. 

 In what looks to be a record or near-record warm winter, even "safe" Vermont lake ice isn't so safe.

This was demonstrated on Lake Memphremagog near Newport along the Canadian border in the Northeast Kingdom.  

The Associated Press reports on this dramatic rescue:

A 3-year-old fell through ice on Lake Memphremagog in northern Vermont with two adults and and another child on a side-by-side recreational vehicle over the weekend and was later hospitalized, Newport Police said Tuesday.

By the time police responded Saturday evening, the four were out of the water, and three people ran toward the officers pulling a sled carrying a man doing chest compressions on the 3-year-old, police said in a statement. 

Officers pulled the sled to shore while the man continued the chest compressions. Rescue crews met them at the shore and provided aid to the child, who was taken to North Country Hospital."

The three others who fell through the ice suffered from hyperthermia and exhaustion but have recovered. 

The child was later transferred to the University of Vermont Medical Center and has a long road ahead for recovery, the AP reported. 

The Newport Dispatch said the four who fell through the ice were on a family ice fishing excursion when the incident happened. The three year old was on a ventilator but there is some cautious optimism concerning the boy's health.  

There is a GoFundMe set up to help cover the family's medical expenses. Updates on that page indicate the boy is improving but is not entirely out of the woods yet. 

DANGEROUS ICE

Lake ice across Vermont has been dangerous thin to nonexistent all winter due to the one-two punch of El Nino and climate change. El Nino tends to make our winters warmer in Vermont most of the time, accentuating an overall trend toward warmer conditions in an altered climate. 

This is true even on traditionally "safe" lakes - ones that are small, have relatively shallow water or are in colder regions of the state. 

Most of Lake Memphremagog, which straddles the Vermont/Quebec border, usually has ice that's a good foot thick by mid-February.  That's generally considered safe enough to drive a pickup truck on. 

Not this year.  Before I go on, I'm absolutely not blaming the family involved for going out on the ice. It's very normal to go out on that lake an ice fish in February. What isn't normal is the degree to which ice is terrible this year. 

Newport Police Officer Tanner Jacobs, the first cop on the scene, told WPTZ-TV the spot where the family fell through only had ice about 1.5 inches thick.  Jacobs also emphasized the family did nothing wrong. Ice should  have been much thicker in that spot, but this winter's freeze/thaw and more thaw cycles messed that. 

If anything, any remaining lake ice across Vermont is about to get worse. It was warm Thursday and today. After a quick cold snap, it's going to get even warmer than it's been.

Even if it finally turns colder in March, the sun angle is now increasing.  Even on chilly days, some of the ice can melt or soften during the day, especially if it's sunny.  

I would pretty much guarantee next winter will be colder in Vermont than this one has been. But the general trend toward warmer winters and thinner lake ice will make the traditions of ice fishing and other cold season recreation on the states lakes and ponds ever more risky as the years go by.