Our last decent rain was middle of August. We finally received a few 0.02" recently over a couple of days fwiw.

I watered normally around end of August, thinking it was going to cool off like most of our Falls (We consider September as 'Fall").

It ended up It was in the 80's every single day, all of September and some of my plants didn't want to shut down and started sending out new growth!

First half of October was still 60's and 70's but it did begin to cool off at night and now we've had a few frosts/freezes since, and it gave me a chance to let things dry down some but it still makes me wonder if things will survive the winter here.

Substantial rain forecast next Tuesday and Wednesday, if they don't change it again. It's beginning to feel like a year ago last summer with promises of rain, then it disappears when the time comes or becomes spotty rains that not everyone gets.

Yeah, haven't seen so much color on the drought monitor page in a very long time, tho temps here have actually been slightly below avg for the last couple weeks (some pretty warm days but nights almost always cold).

http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

Coffeetrees on my lot, one 30ft tall and two other small ones, lost all leaves by mid-Sep, and all 3 of the mature sugar maples that were already here lost leaves late Sep (w/no coloring). So I'm seeing in them a notable lack of drought/heat resistance. My tuliptree too lost leaves earlier than usual, but had some color. Other tuliptrees seen along south slopes started yellowing of some leaves in Aug. My sourwood's leaves drooped in the worst heat, but responded well to some watering. Oaks and hickories in the forests seem unaffected. I don't think any of the pines on my lot or anywhere else were bothered either.

We didn't get the rain that was forecast either, maybe 0.06" total over a couple of days then sunny, windy and warm on Monday. So I did some watering on the moisture loving plants.

It appears the cold will be moving in with a hard freeze on Friday AM. Substantial rain again forecast for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday but then highs into high 40's after that so looks like we're done for the season. I thought you guys got in the remnants of Helene but there was a segment on TV last night telling how widespread the drought was all over the east and southeastern US.

It’s dry here, but the forecast is cooler and wet. I read that Philadelphia recently set a record with its 29th straight day with no precipitation.

Very dry here too in southeastern West Virginia.

It was 83 here today in Northeast NJ, almost 0 rain since August. Foliage was bright this year and seemed a bit premature. But at least this year, the leaves are falling, in wet, warm years, the leaves stay till a hard freeze and then, they stay on the tree but are dead. Been no frost yet here yet, but the DRY caused the early color. My prediction is that the big DRY will continue, till the big WET begins for Winter. Last winter there was repeated flooding.

I've been looking at the drought monitor for decades.

I hardly remember a time when so much of the country was under drought conditions.

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

update

at least it's expected to rain somewhere in the next few days

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/qpf/p168i.gif

Oddly for how dry it has been fall color is turning out pretty well. I think if this was a 100 degree August and it was this dry we would be watering much much more.

That U.S. Drought Monitor map is almost painful to look at. Various stages of dry all over, but not so much in Florida and Western N.C.

Toronado, I notice some trees color better in dry weather -- black walnut is an example, which in moist weather gets autumn anthracnose.

David, not to sound dispiriting but yesterday when I looked at your noaa precipitation map, it aligned with my local extended forecast showed my area getting ~3/4" rain during that time period.

Today already, they've downgraded us locally to ~0.2" and it wouldn't surprise me if we don't get anything at all.

That type of forecasting has always been 'on par' for the course here but the results portray the droughty conditions my part of the country is known for. I do sometimes I wish they'd just stop making promises they can't keep. ;-)

But I'm always glad to see that someone, somewhere is getting the rains. It would be much worse if the entire country was in full scale drought for extended periods.

I am perplexed when the weather maps show severe levels of drought in areas known to be dry like the 'Desert Southwest'.

" Today already, they've downgraded us locally to ~0.2" and it wouldn't surprise me if we don't get anything at all. "

No it's alright, please share! Same thing happened here all summer! (and actually, in late spring too) Forecast would be for X amount, we got 1/3rd of that if we were lucky!

I think to have a better understanding of a person's situation, one needs to look at the 10-year averages for precipitation in your particular area of the country.

Just because it's been dry for X number of days, weeks or months, doesn't mean you are having a drought. Some parts of the country are inherently more arid than other parts.

An interest article and map have this to say:

The 100th meridian is a near perfect and stark dividing line that separates the abundant rainfall in the east from the predominantly desert conditions of the west. In the West, the highest elevations including mountains of the Pacific Northwest and Northern California are the most notable exceptions. The Gulf of Mexico is clearly a major influence in the East.

Source:

https://nyskiblog.com/directory/weather-data/us/annual-precipitation-map/

and just to add, the totals on the map seem high, at least for my area which look more like the highest totals ever achieved here.

They forecast rain amounts from modeled atmospheric synoptics, but I'm not sure the models account properly in long-range the amount of moisture in the soil/land (which affects amounts of rain). So I see, like you'all, that initial long-range rain forecasts seem to get less and less as the rain-event arrives to a region that is in significant drought. Joe Bastardi suggested a change of patterns over the US (a return to avg rain) might occur in a couple weeks.

Believe it or not, my spot is still alittle above avg for the year, but the excesses occurred early in the year, and that moisture is long gone.

I was going to mention to that, the time of year that the rain comes will make crop results (and gardens) vary. People I know who live in western south Dakota where rain is limited, told me once that it isn't so much the amount of rain they get as it is when they get it.

In my area, we need rain during the summer. We always have high humidity, southeast winds from the gulf assure us of that, but our forecasters say that's also the time when temperatures are so hot that the upper atmosphere, it is just as warm as the lower air layers. This causes a 'cap' so to speak in the atmosphere with no place for the hot humid air to rise and no abrupt temperature change. It takes a pretty sharp cold front to cause the 'trigger' needed for thunderstorms to develop (our main source of summer rains).

During the 'dog days of summer' when a huge high pressure develops over us, the weather is so warm and calm that no cold fronts are found moving through to trigger those sometimes-severe weather events that deliver 1-2-3" of rain, some years every few days to a week or so.

And years are different, but generally we have a month or two of really dry spells at that time of year. And as expected the poorer and more porous the soil the less time it takes to dry out and the less time plants have to develop before it dries up again.

In my neck of the woods (coastal Northeast), Autumn is typically warm and on the dry side. Autumn precip is dependent on tropical systems, and this year, despite the predictions of a lots of tropical systems, NONE have offered any precip up this way. Last winter was crazy WET, and I expect the same. Spring and Summer precip now all over the place (flooding to flash drought). Wild fires now breaking out all over the place in nearby rural woods

This chart shows the longest dry spells on the Eastern Shore. It's kind of alarming to see some patterns here starting in the 1930s, well known for drought and dry spells. Also worries me to see 2001 and 2000 because I vaguely remember that being the start of a dry stretch of years, culminating with the 2002 drought. Nothing about the mid sixties sticks out in my mind, other than record cold in the SW US in 1962 (the -10F that some date palms astonishingly survived in places like Las Cruces) and of course the famously cold winter of 1963 in the UK. Actually, that's kind of interesting because UK's most recent cold winter was 2010, while El Paso/Las Cruces/eastern Arizona had a cold one in 2011. So maybe there's an atmospheric teleconnection of some kind there.

So perhaps this is a sign we have started another cycle of years prone to east coast dry spells like 2010-2012 or 2000-2002.

Here's an interesting page

https://cpo.noaa.gov/nca5-drought-and-climate-change-in-10-maps/

which offers some reassurance to those of us on the east coast at least.

Our subsoil moisture was depleted summer before last, with an abnormally dry season that followed a couple of seasons where we received barely enough rain to get by.

The regular rains we received last summer weren't near enough in volume to replenish what we lost.

In the past, we would get what we called 3-day rains, where in the spring (April) it would cloud up and rain steady, maybe off and on for 2-3-4 days really soaking thing up again.

We haven't seen that kind of thing here for several years now.

For now, I'd be happy with some snow cover before the real cold arrives. Much of our snow generally runs off down into the sewers if the ground is frozen when it falls but even then, some of the melting pools in places and eventually soaks in.

And if the snow melts slowly over time in the spring, the ground gets exposed in places then thaws in the sun, allowing the remaining snow melting to soak in, so we get some benefit in that way. Not to mention the ground cover during the severe cold is great.

I keep thinking that things will go back to normal like the good old days but just about the time I think I have it figured out, it changes again. ;-)

Davidrt, tho the 1930s was notorious for droughts and heat, the worst dry period in western MD was actually the 1960s. Every summer growing up there, our lawns were burned brown by mid-summer. Our house didn't have air-conditioning, and summer 1966 was so hot (106F IIRC), that the family had to go in the basement and sleep on cots to escape the heat. The dry period was broken in 1969.

And actually, avg yearly rain has increased noticeably in west MD since the 1960s. Cumberland, MD, for example, averaged (a 30-year avg) around 40" yearly in 1900, dropped to 35" in the 1960s, and now back to about 40" again. My spot averages 42.5" since 2004. Hagerstown, MD is about the same.

Pretty good 7-day precip in central US. Sorry for missed areas.

Not sure of your source, this is the officialDrought Monitor Drought Monitor.

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

This is not just "in my own backyard".

Cool, wet, and dreary here in west-central Wisconsin. Tomorrow’s forecast is for rain. I’m somewhere between red with anger and blue with sadness over the weather. I’d like to complain, but it seems callous when so many have it so worse.

I happened to visit the Lake Lure Flowering Bridge near Chimney Rock, NC, this past Spring. It was entirely done by volunteers, and it was simply amazing. They took a defunct bridge and turned it into a beautiful garden. Thanks to Helene, it’s now gone.

Yep as ben posted, relief for those in the midwest, at least, is coming or in progress. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/11/04/drought-us-record-conditions-flood-forecast/

The long term forecasts, for now at least, are looking better.

Not a moment too soon. Even my mature rhododendrons are starting to show the curling leaves of drought stress now. Something that hasn't happened since the 2010-2012 dry years. (of course, they were less mature back then hahaha)

I'll update this thread later if I can grab a pic of my large Illicium floridanum. Looks really, really bad but I think it will pull through.

Still dry here. We had a couple foggy/misty days that made the asphalt appear to be wet but fell into that dry spot on bengs last map above in west central MN.

Been cloudy, cool with near freezing temperatures at night. Moisture requirements low at this time.

Picture taken a few years ago at a wayside stop south of Brainerd MN.

81 F, tomorrow, smoke today. Seems to wanna change in the extended. Not a drop of rain in about 40 days, almost every day is crystal clear or maybe some high cirrus clouds. Gorgeous weather but San Diego weather will not sustain eastern forests for long.. Once it does change to a more winter pattern, my concerns will turn to flooding.

Weather recorder in Hagerstown, MD (records back to 1899), said new record for continuous rainless days was ended on 11/10/24 at 33 days. Previous record was 26 days in the summer of 1968.

https://i4weather.net/nov24.txt

For info, while recording rain near Blacksburg, VA, Oct 2000 had zero rain and Sep 1991 had 0.28" rain (forest fires that yr).

Edit: .50" rain here late yesterday/early morning today. Ground sucked it up so much, can't hardly tell.

We're still dry. Been a few cloudy days with a misty fog that made the ground appear to be wet. But with highs in the low to upper 40s' and low to mid 30's at night, every time I put my finger into the soil around my plants, it feels cold and sort of damp.

A couple of tenths forecast for tomorrow. 🤞

11-13-2024:

Well, davidrt28's map above for 11-12 thru the 18th did give us misty fog the other day and then an all-day rain today.

And I'm not complaining but the rain was like misty sprinkles and guessing totals were in the range of maybe 0.05-0.1" (I didn't have a gauge out).

There's a few tenths forecast on the 18th, then rain changing to snow on the 19th, 20th and 21st which could deliver another few tenths of moisture.

But after that, the temperatures dive down below freezing, for possibly until next spring. So I'm just glad we're getting some relief and everything doesn't go into winter bone dry.

This is about a week late on our median for season changeover from Fall to Winter, so not too far off.

11-15-2024:

How fast things can change!

I hope you easterners picked up good precipitation during that spell depicted on the previous map.

The map I looked at today (below) isn't as good for the entire east coast and a large part of the southeast and south central.

Up here we may be fortunate with an inch of rain before the ground freezes. That would be the best-case scenario if we would get a good soaking before the big freeze arrives.

Below is our forecast for Monday and Tuesday (bring it on). Note the temps after Tuesday.

fwiw:

Right on schedule, settled in nice over us.

Started raining at 6:00 pm. Ending 10:00 AM tomorrow.

Nothing real heavy, just a steady, slow soaking rain. 0.88" predicted.

This should do it for the season. :o)

I put the rain gauge out just to confirm.

Yeah, I saw that. "Witch of November" calling?

h/t Gordon Lightfoot

The weathermen were wrong again. We didn't get 0.88" last night.

We got 1.92" :-)) All slow soaking rain with a few brief episodes of harder rain.

My Hi-Tech rain gauge, freebie from the local bank (had it for years):

' "Witch of November" '

Interesting beng. The famous wrecking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Long before that event happened, there was another story I remember hearing, from my childhood. It happened before my time, but we were warned as children about the chance of it happening again in the future.

It was the Upper Midwest 'Armistice Day Blizzard' Nov. 11, 1940.

Started out in the PNW and raced across the US.

We lost some ships in the great lakes then also.

Interesting read for us 'Weather Watchers'.

https://www.weather.gov/dvn/armistice_day_blizzard

Almost an inch here. Biggest rainfall since early August! Which is good because we'd just been put in extreme drought. I've never experienced that anywhere I've gardened, any point in my life. (getting alarmingly close to 50 LOL)

I used surfactants on sloped areas because the soil was incredibly hydrophobic. Don't have time to post pictures but I experimentally didn't treat some areas. Next day after rain they looked bone dry!

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?Northeast

Even with the recent rain, many places in the mid-Atlantic are looking at their driest 3 month spell ever.

Site,2024 precip 9/1-11/22, Driest Autumn, Year, Driest 3 month Calendar period, months

Allentown (ABE), 2.86, 3.81, 1922, 3.58, Oct-Dec 1928

A.C. Airport (ACY), 2.23, 3.34, 2001, 2.35, Oct-Dec 1946

A.C. Marina (55N), 1.61, 2.89, 1941, 2.52, Aug-Oct 1895

Georgetown (GED), 1.41, 2.67, 2001, 2.20, Aug-Oct 2024

Mount Pocono (MPO), 5.06, 4.21, 1931, 3.36, Oct-Dec 1928

Philadelphia (PHL), 2.20, 2.37, 1922, 2.37, Sep-Nov 1922

Reading (RDG), 2.34, 2.89, 1922, 2.89, Sep-Nov 1922

Trenton (TTN), 2.12, 3.18, 1922, 2.66, Jun-Aug 1966

Wilmington (ILG), 1.85, 3.17, 1922, 3.17, Sep-Nov 1922

Thanks, David -- interesting of course. 1922 was very dry (I see 2001 crept in there). My total here (MD) for Sept thru now (11/25/24) is 3.63, 1.58, 1.28. Hagerstown, MD has less, 1.78. 0.57, 1.00. Airport just north of Hagerstown on MD/PA line has even less than that.

While living in southwest VA, Aug thru Oct 1991 had 1.27, 0.28. 0.54. Big forest fires occurred in WV in late Oct 1991. While still there in VA, Oct 2000 had 0.00. Can never beat that record.....