It’s been more than a year since all of New Hampshire was completely drought-free, and despite some spring and summer rain, drought has returned to a central swath of the state as fall approaches. Meanwhile, in some parts of the southeast and Seacoast, it never went away.
That’s despite last winter’s snowfall totals, which were close to typical by historical standards, scientists said. Yet that snow contained less water, reducing its mitigating effect on the drought. It’s an example of how stretches of more “normal” conditions are not always enough to overcome impacts from increasingly extreme weather — a pattern that tracks with scientists’ understanding of how climate change manifests in New Hampshire, according to State Climatologist Mary Stampone.
“What we’re seeing when we get these multi-year drought periods is that, you know, the amount of snow we get or the way we get our precipitation in the winter isn’t enough to help us recover from the previous season’s drought,” Stampone said.
As of early September, more than half of New Hampshire was experiencing moderate drought, while about 41% was abnormally dry, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
As of Sept. 8, the drought area stretches across central and eastern New Hampshire, while the North Country and southwestern New Hampshire are listed as “abnormally dry,” a condition on the edge of drought. An area of southwestern New Hampshire along the Vermont border, representing approximately 4% of the state by land area, is experiencing typical conditions.
The last time New Hampshire was entirely drought-free was last summer, according to the Drought Monitor’s metrics — which are informed by a net of local measurements of precipitation, stream flow, reservoir levels, temperature, soil moisture, and more. The summer of 2025, indeed, began with plentiful rainfall, Stampone said. But that gave way to a hot and dry stretch in mid- and late summer; by Aug. 12, 2025, “moderate drought” had set in in eastern New Hampshire.
A month later, a portion of central New Hampshire entered “extreme drought.” That condition, shown in red on the Drought Monitor map, continued to expand until it peaked at just over half of New Hampshire in mid-October 2025.
The abrupt plunge into severe drought conditions reflects how scientists believe climate change manifests in New Hampshire, with both rain and dry weather becoming more concentrated. Stampone said increasingly extreme fluctuations in conditions, linked to climate change, allow droughts to take hold quickly and ultimately reach greater intensity.
“It’s not that these droughts are unheard of for New England. We have a highly variable climate, but what’s different today … is this increase in intensity that we’re seeing, that tends to happen in late summer,” she said.
The snow that accumulates on the ground throughout New Hampshire’s winter typically trickles into groundwater aquifers as it melts, making it an important factor in an area’s emergence from drought conditions.
Last winter’s snowfall was promising in some ways, totaling near historical averages in inches across much of New Hampshire, according to Eric Kelsey, a snowpack researcher and research associate professor at Plymouth State University.
But there was a catch: That snow, he said, was “dry.”
Scientists call the amount of water contained in snow “snow water equivalent,” or “SWE,” often pronounced “swee,” for short. Wetter, denser snow has a higher SWE measurement, while fluffier snow has less. This measurement is crucial for determining the effect of snowfall on groundwater.
Last winter’s total snow water equivalent across the state was well below historical averages, ranging between about 50% and 75% of those benchmarks in most places, Kelsey said. Thus, from a drought perspective, the snowfall brought less relief.
“It was a drier winter, if you will, even though there was plenty of snow on the ground,” Kelsey said. That’s somewhat rare, he said, “especially these days.”
Nonetheless, more plentiful rainfall in the spring and summer made up for it, alleviating drought conditions in much of the state, except in portions of southeastern counties that remained in drought. In some parts of central New Hampshire, rainfall totals approached two times average levels in late spring, Kelsey said.
This helped reduce that area’s rain debt for a time. But following what has become a pattern of shifting extremes, drought and dry conditions have returned relatively quickly to a swath of the state this fall, though conditions are less severe than they were at this time last year.
Prolonged dry periods without relief increase the chances that areas could rapidly enter severe drought conditions, Kelsey said.
“It causes stakeholders to be on heightened alert constantly, you know, where the situation isn’t dire, but the drought’s at a point where it could only take another month or two of really dry conditions to make it a really bad drought,” he said.
Drought in New Hampshire strains farmers and the large number of residents who rely on wells for drinking water. About 250 people have reported a dry well to the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services over the last year, according to the department, which reopened its Emergency Drought Assistance Program in 2025.
The department approved 60 emergency assistance projects to move ahead, with about half completed so far, said Water Division Assistant Director Ted Diers. The department expects to spend all $1.8 million allocated to this phase of the program on those projects, he said; more applications are still pending, and the program does not currently have enough funds to complete them.
“At this time, it does not appear likely that the program will be opened to new applications,” he said in an email.
Meanwhile, 88 public water systems across the state and two municipalities have outdoor water use restrictions in place, according to the department.
This fall’s drought is not as extreme as last year’s was at this point, but it remains unclear when relief could come.
Hard-hit areas of New Hampshire are contending with a precipitation deficit of about 10 inches, an amount that would need to arrive before frost sets in and makes it more difficult for that water to permeate the ground, Stampone said. NHDES attributes low water tables in the southern portion of the state to a much longer-term precipitation deficit.
This year’s snowfall could affect these conditions and set the tone for how much relief may come in spring, Stampone said.
Another area for hope is the outlook for New Hampshire’s awe-inspiring, tourism-driving fall foliage, which can sometimes be impacted by severe drought as dry leaves fail to display their vivid colors.
The North Country and mountains have milder dry conditions, with less of a precipitation deficit than some other portions of the state, Stampone said — so it’s quite possible that the leaves will still put on their show.