Extreme drought strikes portions of Connecticut
Dry weather stretches into fall with rain down 11 inches for the year
The signs of drought are obvious: sunny days without end, trees dropping leaves in summer, soil so dry it’s become dust and grass once soft and green now a hard brown thatch that crunches underfoot.
Combined with this summer’s record-setting heat, the parched conditions in Connecticut are worrisome.
“We take it for granted that New
England is water rich,” said Chris Phelps, state director of Environment Connecticut, an advocacy group. “What is normal for Connecticut and what is normal for NewEngland are changing for the worse.”
The drought affects dairy farmers who struggle to bring in enough corn and hay because of the drought. Extreme drought conditions can threaten Christmas tree farms and other farm crops.
On average, the Hartford area should have received about 33 inches of rain since the first of the year, but just 22 inches have fallen, leaving the area down by about 11 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
Responding to what’s shaping up as the most arid spell since 2016, Connecticut officials recently added New London County to four counties already listed as experiencing an “incipient drought” that calls for water conservation.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sept. 20 rated 90% of pastures in Connecticut and Massachusetts very poor to poor and 100% of Rhode Island’s pastures in similar shape. In addition, streamflow in many areas of the Northeast is very low for this time of year, with some hardest hit areas reporting wells going dry and requiring new wells.
“Given the mounting drought impacts, significant deterioration was shown in several areas from Pennsylvania to Maine,” officials said.
Kristie Smith, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Norton, Mass., said the Hartford area received less than one inch of rain so far this month, compared with 2.6 inches typical for September.
In August, the area received 2.2 inches, a little more than half what would be considered normal for the month. Just 1 inch of rain fell in the region in July, compared with 4 inches that’s more typical.
And in June, rainfall amounted
to “a quarter of what you would see,” Smith said.
“Certainly we have been in a drought for a very long time,” she said.
Gary Lessor, chief meteorologist at the Western Connecticut State University’s Weather Center, blamed a high pressure front off the coast that “kind of brought all the hot, dry conditions to New England” and high pressure this month over the Appalachians that also blocked rain.
Rainfalls this summer have been nothing more than “nuisance precipitation,” he said.
Water in Connecticut’s reservoirs is dropping. Levels on Sept. 10 were pegged at an average of 73.6% full, a decline from 75% full the previous week, according to the state Department of Public Health. The state average for normal is 89.5%.
Farms and garden centers have a big stake in the weather and are warily watching daily forecasts.
“My husband obsesses about it,” said Meghan Burnett, manager of Burnett’ s Country Gardens in Salem.
To find more water, Burnett’s nursery has had to dig deeper into ponds. The garden center considered calling pool companies to truck in water “and see how long we can limp by,” she said. A neighbor instead allowed the use of a pump to bring in additional water, Burnett said.
Kevin Zorda, a landscape designer at the Garden Barn in Vernon, said more customers are looking to replace plants that have died for lack of water.
“It’s pretty obvious even if people say they water every day,” he said. “It may not be enough.”
Connecticut’s dairy farmers have been forced to look elsewhere for corn feed because yields are down due to the lack of rain. A good corn crop generally requires 15 inches of rain and less than half that total has fallen this summer, Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt said. Farmers whodon’t have ponds have to bring in water, he said.
Hay production also is down, forcing farmers to buy from other farms.
“You’re losing revenue and increasing costs,” Hurlburt said.
Extreme weather raises the question of whether, or to what degree, climate change is to blame. He cited what’s happened so far: a wet and cold spring, a hot and dry summer, hail storms and spells of frost in summer.
“Farming is the one business where you can do everything right all the time and still lose money,” Hurlburt said.
The average temperature this summer was 72.5 degrees, considered by the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University as a preliminary record for Connecticut’s hottest summer. Averages were gathered between 1895 and 2020.
Phelps said climate change is evident in extreme swings from storms delivering a deluge to droughts and increasingly hot summers.
“That’s not normal,” he said. “Calling it not normal is not doing it justice. New England is a pretty stable climate for heat and precipitation.”
Some relief might be in the works, with showers forecast for Monday. But extensive, soaking rains are needed to reverse the impact of the drought and Connecticut has missed out on several opportunities.
“Several times this year it looked like it would break,” Lessor said. “It didn’t happen.”