Parts of Alabama and Georgia have seen no rain in two months as drought expands in the South, the Northeast and the Great Plains, said the weekly Drought Monitor. “The dryness in the Southeast dates back to the beginning of the year, which has dried soils and brought stream flows to record lows.”
Some 30 percent of the country was in drought ranging in intensity from moderate to exceptional, up 3 points in one week and 11 points higher than the start of 2016, according to the weekly report. “The continued and prolonged dryness in many areas resulted in expanding and intensifying drought, especially in the central to southern Plains, Lower Mississippi Valley to Ohio Valley, and Southeast to Northeast.”
The record-large U.S. corn and soybean crops were largely untouched by dryness, but 31 percent of U.S. cattle and 32 percent of hay land are in drought and so is a quarter of winter wheat territory. The USDA says 84 percent of winter wheat, planted in early fall, has emerged and is in average condition for mid-November. The major winter wheat states are in the Plains and Midwest. Moderate drought covers western Kansas, eastern Colorado and the Oklahoma panhandle.
Rain has not fallen in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Ala., for 58 days, the same span without rain for at least four weather stations in Georgia. Across the South, stock ponds are drying up and livestock producers are trucking water to the animals. Many producers are feeding hay to livestock because pastures have withered.
Light rain, generally less than a half inch, fell in the Northeast — too little to prevent drought areas from growing in size. Extreme drought, the second-most dire category of drought, expanded from Massachusetts across western Connecticut to the Catskills of southeastern New York State. Subsoil moisture was short or very short in 83 percent of Massachusetts, 81 percent of New Hampshire, 80 percent of Rhode Island, 67 percent of Connecticut and 58 percent of Maine.
In its worst drought in a decade, New England would need an especially rainy and snowy winter “to undo the damage wrought by the months-long drought,” said the Boston Globe. “It’ll probably be an average winter, so we’ll get snow,” National Weather Service meteorologist Lenore Correia told the Globe. “But we won’t get the above-normal snow that would help us with the drought.”
Drought coverage has eased in the West but remains strong in California’s Central Valley, the state’s major agricultural area. Rain fell in the Pacific Northwest this week. “But this is well into the wet season for the Northwest, so the precipitation that fell was still below normal in most locations,” said the Drought Monitor. Warm, dry weather “has led to an abysmal start to the snowpack season” in the Colorado River basin.