4.26.12 Progress Made In Drought, But Still Down

Steve Glazier

Posted: Updated:

By Steve Glazier - email

It's Thursday and you know what that means? Yes it's almost the weekend, but also I have an update on the drought situation for New England and for VT/NH/NY. Substantial rainfall of 1-4" across New England gave the ground a much needed drink earlier this week. It was the first time in about half a year that we saw rain totals of that nature. Still even with the recent rain, our drought situation still exists across New England.

Let's start with last week and the change since then. This picture below is from last week from the Drought Monitor.

Below is this week:

Notice much of the northeast still has yellows and browns covering it. The extent isn't as much though. There are spots now in the colors, which shows some areas are catching up and even getting out of drought. Both weeks I highlighted the top left part of the image. That shows the difference in drought situations from the week prior to the current time. Last week we saw those numbers jump up or stay the same, showing slight to severe drought persisting. This week however, I'm seeing more decreases in the categories. Areas seeing abnormally dry weather dropped from 69% to 64% and moderate drought 28% to 26%, also severe drought 7% last week to 4% this week. So that's some good news there.

Locally...

This week...

The images don't look that different to me. The abnormally dry areas decreased from 100% to 98%, moderate drought dropped from 15% to 9%, and places seeing no drought rose from 0% last week to 2% this week.

So it's a slight improvement, though as you can tell from the images the drought is still here.

Here are updated rainfall deficits for the year, through Wednesday April 25.

Springfield, VT: -4.27"

Rutland, VT: -2.74"

Montpelier, VT: -2.32"

Burlington ,VT: -2.11"

Massena, NY: -1.92"

Saranac Lake, NY: -0.76"

The region should see a widespread 0.25"-0.50" of rain Thursday night, April 26. Following that, the area will be staying dry for the next several days (aside from a few showers). Next week's drought update will probably show similar conditions to this week.

-Meteorologist Steve Glazier