State’s wet October isn’t enough to break the drought

Since September, we’ve had regular rain — heavy enough some days to strip fall leaves to the wet ground rather than leaving them fastened for admiration

But the water isn’t moving underground. We’re still in drought.

The U.S. Drought Monitor map issued Oct. 13 puts all of western Connecticut in at least moderate drought conditions. Much of Litchfield County and the Danbury area are even drier — they’re classified as being in severe drought.

You can see the map at bit.ly/3etuiM1

The map shows that despite the rain we’ve had, we need more.

Matt Spies of Brookfield, state coordinator for CoCoRaHS — the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network which uses volunteers to measure precipitation — said the state suffered a 5to 10-inch rain deficit from June through August.

While September had 1 to 2 inches of rain above the normal 4 inches, and October has been wet so far, that isn’t nearly enough to be a droughtbreaker.

“One good rain doesn’t make up the difference,” he said.

He said, even a sizeable downpour won’t cut it.

“You may get 5 inches of rain, but that may only affect the 5 square miles around you,” Spies said.

Carol Haskins, executive director of the Pomperaug River Watershed Coalition, which includes the towns of Southbury and Woodbury, said at its lowest this summer, the Pomperaug River ran at 4 cubic feet of water per second.

“Our average is 32-33 cubic feet per second,” Haskins said

The coalition also measures the level of water underground, in the river’s aquifer. It is usually at 18 feet below surface level. This summer, it dropped by 3 feet to 21 feet below surface level.

“We are still in a lowflow threshold,” Haskins said.

Along the coastline, some towns are even drier. Norwalk has issued a water emergency, with town officials there saying the town has received its least amount of rain on record in 43 years.

This isn’t new. Connecticut can be prone to dry summers.

“It happens all the time,” said Gary Lessor, director of The Weather Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. “In Connecticut, we can get very dry periods. The whole world gets them.”

It can also have extended periods of drought as it did from 2015-2017. Climate change may exacerbate these dry conditions, giving the state “flash droughts” — sudden weeks of rainlessness.

To help manage these conditions, Connecticut has both a Water Planning Council and an Interagency Drought Workgroup.

It now says the entire state is in Stage 2 — incipient drought — conditions, which asks state residents to be mindful of water use and to conserve, rather than waste it. The Drought Workgroups will update that report after it meets in November.

The state also posts the U.S. Drought Monitor map.

The University of Nebraska at Lincoln posts the map weekly. It uses data collected by both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — NOAA, the agency in charge of predicting the nation’s weather — to prepare it.

NOAA meteorologist Brad Pugh said that the university looks at several factors before revising the map each week, including precipitation, soil moisture and 28-day stream flows.

Here’s the rub. Most people don’t see underground aquifers or measure stream flow. They look out their windows and see rain and figure the dry season is ending.

“If it hasn’t rained, and then it rains, they think the drought is over,” said Bill Jacquemin, senior meteorologist at the Connecticut Weather Center in Danbury.

But Jacquemin said dry soil and thirsty trees and plants just drink up any initial rain. The September rains, he said, may have saved the fall foliage season from being just a drab, dry blur.

But as long as it rains regularly from now on, the state should recover from the summer’s drought come spring.

The sun is lower on the sky and it’s not as hot, so there’s less evaporation from lakes and reservoirs.

The trees and other plants are now going dormant if not dying outright. That means there’s a lot less water being drawn from the ground to nourish them. People may even stop watering their lawns in November.

“Everything is cyclical,” Jacquemin said

Unlike, say Utah, Connecticut gets storms moving from west to east, and from the north, as well as up the Atlantic coast. We’re generally a wet place.

“The West doesn’t get that,” Lessor said.

H John Voorhees III / Hearst Connecticut Media Duck make their way to muddy water in a corner of West Lake Reservoir in Danbury, which serves the west side of the city. The reservoir is at the lowest level of all the city’s reservoirs. The city’s water supply is at roughly 72 percent capacity compared to 100 percent in April and May of this year.