U.S. Water News Online
PORTLAND, Maine -- On the first day of 2002, New Englanders found themselves in the midst of a drought. The farther north you go, the more severe the drought, so that northern Maine is suffering its worst dry spell since 1965 while Southern New England is merely under a drought advisory.
The past year got off to a wet start, with greater-than-normal rainfall through the spring. A dry summer in Northern New England parched the blueberry crop, and by fall it was dry all over.
November tied an 84-year-old record for Rhode Island's driest in more than 100 years of record keeping. Merely 0.31 inches of rain fell at T.F. Green Airport in November, in what is usually one of the region's wettest months with an average of nearly 4 inches of rain.
"We had an extremely wet spring and since then we've had darned little," said Mike Jackson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass. "We're not in a severe drought, but unless we start picking things up and start getting some snow here, we could have a drought here by spring."
The official National Weather Service definition of a drought is precipitation levels at least 15 percent below normal over a 12-month period. In the year just past, Rhode Island fell 13 percent short of normal levels with 40.14 inches of precipitation, 5.79 inches below normal.
This was enough of a shortfall to qualify as a "mild drought" under the Palmer drought index used by the weather service.
In Massachusetts, a "drought management task force" has issued a drought advisory, recommending that people practice water conservation efforts, and that those on private wells pay close attention to water levels. Should dry weather continue, the task force would issue a drought watch, then a drought warning, then an emergency.
In Maine, drought has already reached emergency levels. Precipitation levels across the state are down 35 percent to 45 percent below normal. About 168,000 people are battling with wells that are dry or almost empty; well drillers are busy drilling through frozen ground, and livestock farmers are concerned about finding enough water to keep their animals alive through winter.
There is a possibility of precipitation later this week, though an approaching snowfall seems more likely to clip southern New England and Cape Cod than the parched region of the Northeast.
The National Weather Service's Climatological Center, which forecasts three-month trends, is calling for a colder-than-normal winter for the region. The center hedged its bets for a long-range precipitation forecast, calling for "equal chances for above, below, or normal precipitation" through March.
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