Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:
A “flash drought” touching much of the Northeast, including every state in New England, has continued to intensify this summer, federal forecasters warned last week. The situation is prompting officials to issue fresh warnings of possible wildfires and even implement new water restrictions, with some experts worried the unusual dry spell could signal an emerging pattern in the region—far from the historic megadrought that has plagued the American West for the past two decades.
On Thursday, federal forecasters with the U.S. Drought Monitor upgraded large sections of eastern Massachusetts and southeast Rhode Island from “severe” to “extreme” drought, the second-most severe rating given by the agency. Drought conditions also expanded into parts of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, including in New York City, where parts of Brooklyn are now seeing “severe” levels of drought for the first time in 20 years.
While the Northeast has experienced such droughts before, experts say the recent spate of summer dry spells has been unusual because of its frequency, speed and severity—a likely sign that climate change is exacerbating the situation. Several states in the area have experienced some degree of severe drought every summer since 2016, causing some experts to worry the streak foreshadows an emerging pattern for a region that many have considered relatively insulated from the threats of global warming.
“We hope this is maybe one period of peaking of drought and we get back to many more years of normal precipitation,” Vandana Rao, director of water policy in Massachusetts, told The Associated Press. “But it could just be the beginning of a longer trend.”
In fact, more than half of the United States was facing some level of drought this month, after an especially dry and hot July, the U.S. Drought Monitor said in another recent update. Record-breaking heat this summer, spanning the nation’s coasts—and mirroring similar extreme weather in Europe and Asia—contributed to a “flash drought” developing in parts of the Midwest, South and Northeast, including in states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Massachusetts.
Flash droughts are defined by the rapid onset or intensification of dry conditions, often in a matter of days, that are largely due to bouts of extreme heat, low precipitation and high winds. The areas now in “extreme drought” have received about half of the rainfall that they normally would over the last six months, federal officials said. That’s about 9 to 11 inches less than normal.
