As the northeast gets relief from a months-long drought, climate experts have signalled that the region is seeing more droughts year after year. With worsening droughts, a local wildfire expert has also warned that drier conditions will raise the risk of future wildfires in the coming spring and summer seasons.
Dr. Andrew Vander Yacht, a fire ecologist at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, said that the risk is compounded by the effects of climate change.
“The future involves more frequent and severe droughts and higher temperatures," he said. “All of these things are more conducive to fire.”
Nevertheless, Vander Yacht also stated that those future fires will have a “lower intensity and severity” at first.
According to Curtis Riganti – a climatologist tracking droughts for the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska – climate conditions in the region have been accelerating.
“Over the last, I would say, five to 10 years,” he said, “it’s been a much drier decade with more widespread and significant drought conditions.”
He also added that the region swings between dry and wet extremes, which are both getting increasingly severe.
Jessica Spaccio, a climatologist at Cornell University’s Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC), noted similar observations.
“We say on average in the Northeast, [there are] droughts every two to three years,” she said, “but we’ve seen droughts almost every year in the past five years.”
The U.S. Drought Monitor – an index run by the NDMC in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture – reported that Northern and Western New York are currently shifting out of “moderate” drought levels.
Similar drought levels were also recorded in parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, while worse conditions were recorded in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
Nevertheless, a report from the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) – a program run by NOAA – said that drought conditions are expected to subside as the winter season sets in. Spaccio added that the season’s early snow was a healthy sign of recovery.
“Syracuse was actually on the wet side for November, so parts of central New York are out of drought conditions right now,” she said. “The precipitation has helped some areas, but we just haven’t seen it region-wide.”
Despite the recent snow, the drought left the ground underneath dry in many places. Data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has recorded shortages in groundwater levels and streamflow rates across the region, which Spaccio said will still be felt in the months after the drought.
“[In] places where the ground is frozen up here in northern New England, where they’re dry,” she said, “we’re going to have to wait until spring to see that moisture help replenish the groundwater.”
In the meantime, Riganti suggested staying vigilant for dry conditions and to prepare for future droughts.
“The best time to prepare for drought events is when one is not going on,” he said. “With changing climate, that’s something that people should be leaning into.”
To report dry conditions in your area, you can upload a Condition Monitoring Observer Report to the NDMC.
