LEBANON — Extreme drought conditions continue to spread across the Twin States and this week’s rain isn’t enough to address the deficit.
In Vermont, the majority of Orange, Windsor and Rutland counties now hold an “extreme drought” designation, according to a new map released by the U.S. Drought Monitor, which is a collaboration between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Parts of Addison County have also been upgraded to extreme.
Previously, those areas mostly were in a “severe drought.” The drought scale has five levels. “Severe” is level three and “extreme” is level four.”
This week’s map also shows that “extreme” conditions have spread in New Hampshire’s Sullivan and Merrimack counties. More than half of Carroll County is in an extreme drought, along with portions of Coos and Belknap counties. Extreme conditions have also spread in Maine.
While the region received 2-3 inches of rain this past week, it isn’t enough to end the extreme drought, said Hunter Tubbs, a meteorologist based at the National Weather Service’s Gray, Maine, office.
“That will certainly be beneficial and help in some way, but unfortunately our precipitation deficits are so large it won’t be enough to get us out of drought conditions,” Tubbs said by phone Thursday morning.
In the last two months, the region has received an average of 4 to 6 inches of rain below average, with some parts experiencing up to an 8-inch deficit. The region needs an average of 6 to 12 inches of rain in the next two to three months “to get back to what is considered average,” Tubbs said.
