To put it bluntly, it kinda just this summer. Parts of the northeast that typically get about 9 inches over June, July and August have gotten a fraction of that. Rivers are running low and many streams have gone dry or become a series of disconnected puddles. are crunchy, vegetation is shriveling and groundwater levels are plummeting.
Dave Dumaresq鈥檚 vegetable farm in Dracut is located in the epicenter of it all. And it shows.
His boots kick up plumes of fine dust as he walks between garden beds. The corn stalks have turned brown and the ears are smaller than usual. Instead of a carpet of lush green leaves, the potato field is patchy.
Dumaresq, the founder and owner of 鈥� a 100-acre mostly organic farm 鈥� says that with so little rainfall this summer, he feels like he鈥檚 鈥減laying God鈥� with the fate of his plants.
鈥淲e鈥檙e basically at the point now where we鈥檙e selecting which crops to continue to grow and which crops to basically allow to suffer,鈥� he says. The corn falls into that latter category. He staggers the planting and harvesting, and has gotten two decent pickings so far. But the next two are a crapshoot.
鈥淚鈥檓 not watering those last two plantings,鈥� he says. 鈥淚鈥檓 hoping for rain.鈥�
The forecast is not is not in his favor. What little rain he may get in the next week or so will almost surely not be enough to reverse the tide of this summer鈥檚 drought.
The shows eastern Massachusetts, most of Rhode Island and parts of eastern 黑料吃瓜网 in an 鈥渆xtreme drought.鈥�
Boston, which normally receives 3.27 inches of rain in July, got only 0.62 inches, the National Weather Service. Hartford got 2.66 inches instead of its usual 4.17 inches, and Providence got 0.46 inches, a far cry from its usual 2.91 inches.
In a region known for its steady year-round precipitation, climate scientists say acute droughts like this will become more frequent.
Already this summer, farming in New England is a game of risk, a series of on-going calculations and tough decisions. And an expensive one too.
Dumaresq says a drought year can cost him an extra $60,000 to $100,000. He has to hire several extra people to operate the constantly running irrigation equipment.
鈥淪o you have the increased labor costs, you have the increased fuel costs, and then you also have the increased maintenance costs and purchase cost of replacement equipment,鈥� he says.
He鈥檚 not alone. The Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources says that farmers across the state are struggling with this year鈥檚 drought. Many have reported significant crop losses or seen their hay fields dry up.
Mohammad Hannan, who in Lincoln, says he鈥檚 lost more than half an acre of broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and beans so far.
鈥淎ll that stuff is basically gone,鈥� he says. 鈥淪o it鈥檚 a big, big loss.鈥�
Luckily for him, he has other full-time work. He knows others are not so fortunate.
鈥淚f I did not have another job, I would be in real trouble right now. So I can imagine for the other farmers who are doing it full time, they are really struggling.鈥�
This summer鈥檚 drought is reminiscent of the 2020 and 2016 droughts. And it鈥檚 in sharp contrast to and the summer of 2018 when New England got a ton of rain.
鈥淚t鈥檚 just crazy,鈥� Dumaresq says. 鈥淵es, we鈥檝e heard that we鈥檙e going to see more extremes in the climate, but man, are we seeing it in just this short three-year period.鈥�
Zach Zobel, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, says climate change is certainly playing a role in this weather 鈥渨hiplash.鈥�
As humans have warmed the planet, we鈥檝e changed the atmospheric patterns that shape our weather systems. In a warmer world, weather extremes like severe drought, record rainfalls and heatwaves are getting more extreme.
That鈥檚 not to say that drought is a recent phenomenon in the Northeast. Over the last 150 years, UMASS hydrology professor David Boutt says that records show the region tends to get a dry period like the one we鈥檙e experiencing this summer about once every ten years or so.
There was a very bad drought in the , for instance, and another in 1980 鈥� during that drought, the town of Amherst and UMASS was forced to close and send all of its students home.
But while drought is part of the New England climate, things have changed over the last decade.
This kind of year-to-year variability that we see in precipitation seems to be becoming more pronounced,鈥� Boutt says.
Some experts have started calling droughts like the one the Northeast is currently experiencing 鈥渇lash droughts.鈥� While there鈥檚 debate in the scientific community about how precisely to define a flash drought, in general, it鈥檚 used to describe a drought that comes on rapidly and only lasts for a short period of time.
鈥淲hen we think about droughts in the Northeast, they present differently than in the Midwest or in the West,鈥� says Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, the Vermont state climatologist and a professor at the University of Vermont. They also are more complicated than simply a lack of precipitation.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not just the water, but it鈥檚 also how hot the temperatures are,鈥� she says. Humidity, soil moisture, the rate at which surface water evaporates, even how much water plants suck in through their roots and exhale as vapor 鈥� it all matters.
So do rainfall patterns and human development. The Northeast is experiencing more because of climate change, and it鈥檚 hard for the water from these sudden downpours to absorb into the soil. This means more of it ends up as runoff. Similarly, the more we pave over the ground with impermeable surfaces, the less rainwater makes its way to underground aquifers.
Dupigny-Giroux says it鈥檚 helpful to think about the hydrological system as one of supply and demand. Over the summer, demand for water rises as people and plants use more and higher temperatures cause more evaporation. As a result, rivers, soil moisture and groundwater levels all fall. In drought years, the falloff is steeper, and if the ecosystem doesn鈥檛 have sufficient time to recover before another dry period, the situation can begin to compound.
鈥淪o if I were to say what I think is going on from a deep water perspective, [we鈥檙e in] at least a three-year drought,鈥� she says. After the 2020 drought, the rain from 2021 helped, but it probably didn鈥檛 completely replenish the lost groundwater.
In other words, when farmers like Dave Dumaresq began their season this summer, they may have already been at a hydrological disadvantage.
Drought, the experts all agree, is a complicated phenomenon.
鈥淲hat New England has to worry about are the flash droughts in the summer,鈥� says Zobel of the Woodwell Center. 鈥淭hey are acute in nature and not easy to prepare for. And farmers struggle with the uncertainty.鈥�
Back on Dumaresq鈥檚 farm, that rings true. On a hot dry morning in August, he peers over the rocky edge of one of the man-made ponds. Twelve feet down, a small gasoline-powered pump grumbles and sputters as it sucks up the liquid dregs.
The water is only a couple of inches deep. In a normal year, it would be several feet high at this point in the summer.
鈥淚n June, it recharged to 8 feet,鈥� he says. 鈥淣ow we鈥檙e down to the point where it only recharges to about 2 feet, giving us only about 6,000 gallons of water to pump. We鈥檒l pump that dry in about two hours. Then we鈥檒l let it sit for two days, and pump another 6,000 gallons or so.鈥�
And in the meantime, he鈥檚 just hoping it rains.
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