We’ve turned our attention to other things, but the drought that caused crop failures and poor yields this summer is not behind us. In fact, we need lots of snow this winter to correct soil water deficits before spring. So far, we’ve not had much of any snow to help. This week’s Drought Monitor map shows fairly widespread improvement for some areas in the Northeast —including Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and northern Vermont—as a result of the recent Nor’easter that brought heavy rains and snowfall to the region. Rain totals ranged from 1 to 6 inches with the heaviest precipitation observed in Rhode Island, eastern Massachusetts, and along the coastal areas and north-central portions of Maine. Here in NY though, our areas of Moderate Drought (D1), centered in the Adirondacks, expanded slightly because we’ve missed out on many of those recent storm events. According to the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC), the regional snowpack analysis reports that 60% of the Northeast region is currently covered by snow with an average depth of 2.4 inches and a maximum depth of 20.2 inches.
Current 6-10 day outlooks include probability of higher than normal temperatures and a slight chance of more precipitation than normal, which may alleviate some of these dry soil conditions slightly.