There is concern this spring from the people at the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, the watchdog group that keeps a wary eye on soil moisture conditions across the country and track long-range precipitation trends. The news over the past 12 to 18 months is not good. Nearly one third of the United States is engulfed in drought, with some places facing severe water shortages this summer.
New York City and Baltimore are pumping water from temporary supplies that usually taste funny and have a less-than-desirable color. A lot of shallow wells in New Hampshire and Georgia have run dry, and some Kansas ranchers are bringing in water from other areas and selling their cattle.
This summer is when the going may get tougher. Farmers will need to water their crops and homeowners will want to douse the lawns and gardens. If certain parts of this country don't have a wet spring, the eastern United States may face strict summer water restrictions.
Drought is defined in the glossary of meteorology as "a period of abnormally dry weather sufficiently prolonged for the lack of water to cause a serious hydrologic imbalance (i.e. crop damage, water-supply shortage, etc.) in the affected area." This period of dry weather is a result of several factors coming together at the same time.
{INSERT_RELATED}A La Nina, or cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean water temperature, altered the upper air wind pattern over the continental U.S. This brought warm, dry winters to the southeast U.S. as well as warm, dry summers to the northern Rocky Mountain states.
Also, this winter we have seen a jet stream tracking farther north than usual, leaving much of the lower 48 United States with a rather peaceful winter and lack of major snow cover. Finally, one of the warmest winters on record in some places on the East Coast is letting water soak into soft ground instead of running off to replenish surface supplies.
New York City's reservoirs have dropped to 48% capacity, and a main Baltimore reservoir has sunk to 33% capacity. No doubt there will be water restrictions in these cities and other locations this summer. Here in Milwaukee, we live next to one of the world's largest supplies of fresh water, Lake Michigan. But many suburbs derive their water from underground aquifers, and there is always a delicate balance between too much and too little precipitation between now and the mid-summer heat.
For more information on drought conditions and water supplies, check the web site for the National Drought Mitigation Center at enso.unl.edu/ndmc//A>.
