The Beat Of The Drought Goes On…

July 11,2024

Missed opportunities were the theme of this week as the Alleghenies remain well below normal in terms of precipitation. The remnants of Beryl passing by north as seen below on the previous 3 day precipitation amounts

and now adding insult to injury, some hefty rains passing by east upcoming through tomorrow morning as modeled below off the Euro.

Leaving us missing out on 2 golden opportunities to put a dent in the current rainfall deficit.

So far July is starting out dry and as we push halfway through the month. With most areas falling well under a inch month to date. Some areas under a tenth. July deficits through the date-

The lack of rain though has been ongoing since around mid May when things really began drying out.

since May 15th at Bittinger 2NW Valley I’ve seen 4.92″

other areas since May 15th, with comparisons to other years

Cassleman Gauge at Grantsville 4.23″

At Bayard 7.59″

Elkins 5.37

Frostburg 3.53

Savage River Dam 4.17

Davis 3SE (Canaan Heights) 6.98″

Canaan Valley

Blackwater Gauge at Davis 6.16″

All of these numbers running well below the average for the period

60 day Anomalies

60 day percentage of normal

Temps the previous 60 days overall running above normal

Since July 1

Below normal precip, above normal temps has continued to worsen the current drought situation. As of July 9th the:

Drought Monitor now looks like

state by state

4 Week Evaporative Drought Demand

Soil Moisture

Stream Flow

Glade Run near Bittinger. Many area waterways running low.

From a historical perspective, this pattern has repeated itself many times. We are in a period of time where every event is hyped as “worst ever, driest ever, wettest ever, hottest ever, etc”. It’s simply a product of a pattern that’s occured before, will occur again. With weather there are averages. Not normals. Normal is the worst word ever to describe what should happen any given day, month, year. Our averages are made up of extremes. For a historical perspective let’s look at the long running Drought Severity index

This for the Allegheny Region of Wv

July

August

That’s pretty dang consistent.

Summertime precip (June-Aug)

Pretty consistent on the ebbs and flows of wet,dry,wet,dry.

With more hot weather ahead , and for the most part dry through Sunday, the current conditions will likely get a bit worse before they get better.

The potential outlook as we get through this next bout of heat that goes in to next week is, as it passes, we see a increased storm risk. Yes, storms often generally produce a lot of runoff with the ground this hard, but anything is better than nothing. That’s the initial potential and a bit further out as we go to the last 3rd of July, the ridge looks to build in the west and that leaves the mid Atlantic and southeast with a bit more low pressure and cooler conditions. That’s at least a hint on modeling for now. These dry patterns often are hard to get rid of. Dry breeds dry. Dry also aids in heat.

In terms of heat. As it’s been above normal. Again, from a historical perspective. This is not viewed in a lense of, it’s never been this bad. We are not even close to some of the recorded hottest periods recorded locally.

Let’s hop back to some incredibly hot summers. The hottest period on record for many area stations occured in August of 1918. The 7 day Avg Max Temp at Frostburg was a whopping 97.5

at Cumberland 103! Also tied in July of 1936 we’ll get to in a sec

To note, I am not positive of the daily recording time. It may have been 5pm to 5pm recording station. If that’s the case, that’s why you see a double 109, 101. In these cases that does impact the 7 day avg max. That would take some more digging in to.

the original form