Connecticut’s Drought Remains Despite Snow and Rain

I'm a big fan of heat and sun -- Winter's not my thing. As I was driving to work today in the rain, I was contemplating how much the recent precipitation was helping our severe drought situation. Here's what I found out when I did some research.

All that heat and sun and a huge deficit of rain over the past several months has caused a big problem for our region, though. I've written five blogs since Aug. 30, 2016 about the conditions. Everything from potential tree problems to towns calling for water conservation, to the most recent one I wrote on Nov. 12, 2016:

But, here it is January, and we've had some snow and rain, so you're probably thinking we're out of the woods. Nope, those woods could still "burn, baby, burn."

In a story from wtnh.com, it looks like we still have a ways to go before we can say we are out of danger. Even though we have had had a fair amount of precipitation in the past few weeks, our region has been experiencing a drought for two years now. While recent rain and snow has helped, we have a lot to make up for to consider Connecticut in good shape.

All you have to do is drive past any area reservoirs to know they are way below capacity. The National Drought Mitigation Center publishes the U.S. Drought Monitor. As of Jan.10 this is what it looked like for Connecticut:

Three Quarters of Connecticut remains in either severe, or extreme drought conditions. I don't think that's changing anytime soon, so we all need to be mindful of that.