UNIVERSITY PARK - You have to go back to the early 1980s to find a March as dry as the third month of 2006 -- which was the fifth driest in Pennsylvania since 1895, when such recordkeeping began.
Largely because of March's lack of rainfall, the state Department of Environmental Protection in mid-April declared a drought watch that asks state residents to cut back on (nonessential) water-use by 5 percent. No cause for alarm yet, but Bryan Swistock, Penn State Cooperative Extension water resources specialist, worries that a serious situation is developing.
"I don't want folks to panic, but I don't like the way this is shaping up for our groundwater supplies," he says. "A drought is never a good situation to be in, but for us to be this dry, this early in the year, is a very bad thing. We are nearing the end of the groundwater recharge period, and after a mild, dry winter when there was little if any snow cover across the state, streams and groundwater levels in some areas of the state -- particularly in the Southeast -- are already very low."
What concerns Swistock is that March and April generally are the wettest months - the time of year when groundwater supplies should be recharging. "In Pennsylvania, there aren't great variations between average precipitation from month to month," he says. "But typically in March and April, we get a lot of rain.
"Groundwater starting out the year so low could prove to be disastrous later because usually the levels go down from here. As soon as the trees start leafing out and taking up large amounts of water -- about now in southern Pennsylvania -- it is very difficult to get water into the ground."
Because Swistock works in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, he is very aware of farmers' need for rain in the spring. But for groundwater supplies, given how dry it has been in recent months, the normal amounts of rainfall won't be enough.
"This is a bad time to start a drought because farmers are trying to plant their crops and they must have adequate soil moisture," he said. "But if we are lucky and the showers are timed right, we might get just enough moisture for crops to grow and farmers will be pleased. But folks who depend on wells for drinking water might still face a serious shortage in late summer."
Although he is in the business of monitoring and anticipating precipitation levels, Swistock readily concedes that long-term weather forecasts are unreliable. "Beyond three months, I don't pay any attention to them," he says. "But we don't see any dramatic weather patterns coming into the summer -- we are just not getting much moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. It looks like this drought will get worse before it gets better.
"Looking at the long-term weather forecast by the National Weather Service, Pennsylvania is sort of sandwiched between an area to our south extending down to the Carolinas where a significant drought is projected to develop and an area to our north around the Great Lakes that is projected to receive above-average amounts of rainfall," Swistock continues. "So I suppose we could go either way. But the way our year has started doesn't give me any confidence."
Ironically, while much of the rest of the country dreads the coming hurricane season that has been forecast to be worse than normal, Pennsylvania by late summer may desperately need tropical moisture. "If you look at our state's history, almost all of the serious droughts were broken by the remnants of hurricanes bringing prolonged rains," he says.
"The year after Katrina, I hate to say this, but Pennsylvania may be glad to see the remnants of hurricanes this year if the current weather pattern continues."
Although his experience monitoring precipitation in Pennsylvania makes him pessimistic about groundwater supplies in a year such as this
2006 has, Swistock knows a lot can happen weather-wise before late summer. "Seems like every time I talk about drought, it rains," he says.
"But it will be tough for one or two storm events to overcome this drought. We need to see a change in the weather pattern."
To get more information on dealing with drought, visit Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences Web site at
http://www.cas.psu.edu, click on "Health and Emerging Issues," and then click on "Drought Resources" under "Emergency Readiness."
