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Drought Denting - 3-Day Soaking Delivers Relief

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It has been quite a thing to watch 110"+ of snow disappear without any spring flooding, and then watch another few months pass with barely a storm on the map. As noted in the previous blog post, it seems like we've just been 'extreme hopping' over the past several months with a soaking December, then record snow, record cold, record heat, record dry, and now record cold to start June. Just some regular old weather with intermittent rain would have been nice! But this past 3-day stretch has gone a long way toward easing the very dry conditions that were nearly inconceivable in late February.

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May percent of average precipitation across Southern New England. Source: NOAA AHPS

Before this rain event began, parts of the region registered their driest May in at least 100 years. Before that, the only real rain in April was the Marathon Monday storm (nice timing, Mother Nature). Water bans were already being hoisted and lawns were burning out. I mowed the lawn and almost got carried away in a dust devil. Let's not kid ourselves - this was no California sized drought. Crops weren't failing and foundations weren't sinking. But very dry weather heading into summer is rarely a good thing. It puts stress on flora and increases brush fire risk. Plus, water is inherently a precious resource that we should conserve even in the best of times. The combo of heat and storm-free skies in May were putting us on a road to some tough conditions for the hot season.

Brush Fire
A May 8 brush fire on I-495 in Andover and Lawrence. (Image Credit: Dustin Fitch)

Fortunately in the Northeast, it only takes one real good setup to provide a lot of precipitation and turn fortunes around. Since Sunday, many towns have seen just that. Rain reports from spotters across the region reported a widespread 2-4" of rain, with slightly less for the Cape & Islands and slightly more in a few localized spots. In a big win for us, this rain fell in the best possible fashion! Stretched out over time - allowing it to soak into the ground, saturate deeper, and not runoff excessively. Flash flooding thankfully didn't materialize in most locations, so we got all the benefit without any of the downside (other than record cold temperatures). Yellow pollen has washed away, plants are happy, everyone wins.

2015 Wx Watchers 2 2015 Wx Watchers

A sampling of rain totals around the area. Check out the full roundup from NWS Taunton by clicking here.

So the follow-up question to this is - are we still in a drought? Technically, yes. The agency that provides updates on soil conditions across the country is the USDA's Drought Monitor, which comes out with weekly updates. Those updates are posted on Thursday mornings, and the one that will roll out this week will include most of the rain that fell from this storm. I'd expect the 'Moderate Drought' zone to shrink in size a bit, but some areas will remain in that category. The rest will stay put in the 'abnormally dry' category. You can see that even with this beneficial rain, there are still some pretty sizable year-to-date departures from average. This is especially true into southern New Hampshire, where snow moisture wasn't as high as it was in the Boston Metro this past winter.

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Looking ahead, the pattern looks a lot more conducive for rain chances than it did in May, so I don't expect the dry conditions to get much, if any, worse. Showers are looking likely on Friday as we get an inverted trough setup into New England. After a well-timed dry weekend, showers and storms should return on Monday afternoon. Then another front should approach on Tuesday with some pretty solid moisture in place. Even farther out from that, it looks like the general flow will be able to deliver enough disturbances to keep things interesting. This isn't the washout/dreary sort of rain, but more so shower and thunderstorm chances. So after an initial scare, it's looking more likely that we won't be stuck staring at brown lawns all summer long. I'll cheers to that.

tuesday

Early week setup pointing to more shower/storm chances. Source: WSI Energycast

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