Flash Drought? N. New England Not There Yet, But.....

Irrigating my raised beds last evening in St. Albans, Vermont. The
weather has been gorgeous, but if this keeps up for a few
more weeks, we could find outselves in a drought. 

We are continuing along with our spell of gorgeous late spring weather.  What's not to like? Day after day of wall to wall sunshine, comfortably warm temperatures, a decent breeze to keep the black flies at bay.  It's all good, right?

Well, leave it to me, the prince of weather darkness, to cast a negative light on all this bright sunshine.  

The ground is rapidly drying out in northern New York and the northern half of New England. That includes Vermont, mostly north of Route 4.

We're certainly not there yet, but this weather pattern has the feel of the early stages of a flash drought.

We all know flash floods, right?  In torrential rainstorms, streams and rivers go from perfectly fine to dangerous, raging water in a flash. Hence the name for this type of flood.

Droughts come on much more slowly, over a period of months, seasons, even years.  But sometimes, the water situation is fine, and then you get a spell of just a few weeks in which Ma Nature turns off the water tap, atmospheric conditions cause rapid evaporation of what moisture you have and you suddenly find yourself in a drought.  It can take just a few weeks, which is well, a flash if you're timing drought development.

I want to emphasize here that the North Country is NOT currently in a flash drought.  The latest weekly Drought Monitor shows an area depicted as abnormally dry over northern New York. That's a step below a minor drought. Otherwise, all of New England is OK with the amount of water in the ground and the aquafers.

A lot of that is because we had a very soggy autumn, and adequate precipitation over the winter. As we got into April ground water amounts were at or above normal. April was wet enough over southern Vermont, but dry in the northwest.  Still, no alarm bells with that. It wasn't terrible.

Here's why I've gotten more concerned about a rapid decline into drought. May has been dry.  We've also had a lot of sunny, breezy days. Many of those came before the trees leafed out, so the sunshine and better able to reach forest floors and dry them out.

This past six days have been a remarkable run of very dry weather. I don't remember the last time we had six days in a row with relative humidities in the 15 to 30 percent range. This state of affairs should last into early next week.

This is already having some negative effects. Some forest fires broke out in Maine this week, for instance.

Near constant sunshine on these long May days are further drying things out.  If it rains at all over the next week, which is iffy, it will be light.

The weather will probably turn more humid by the middle of next week, but no big storms are coming. There might be a few hit and miss showers and thunderstorms next week. However, no soakers are in the forecast.

Right now things are great for planting and outdoor work, and your garden should be just fine if you irrigate it.  However, if this keeps up, well drillers will be busy, and some households on wells might run out of water over the summer.

That would be especially bad this year, because the coronavirus pandemic dictates that we must wash our hands, and everything else for that matter, very frequently. That's hard to do without water.

Don't get me wrong, I've been greatly enjoying this string of beautiful days.  However, I would love to hear the drum of some nice overnight downpours every once in awhile to keep the very Green Mountain State that color.











Normal rains could return in a couple weeks and we'll be fine. However, a lot of factors are combing to rapidly dry us out