Light Winter Has Caused Drought For CNY, May Not Change

If you're like me, you probably are thinking, "Drought? In Spring when it's raining?" I was stunned to learn we are suffering a drought, but it makes sense.

I suppose that is because when you think of a drought you think of the dry day, after dry day in the way residents of Phoenix, Arizona would. But for us in wet Upstate New York, a drought means something quite different. Think about it, if a certain place on the globe is used to 1 inch of rain per week then when you have a few weeks of no rain it's considered a drought. So, let's analyze the winter we had in Central New York.

All of this information is coming from NYUP, and according to them this past year Syracuse had 70 inches total of snow. It may seem like a lot but for Syracuse, it's actually almost half as much as they normally get. They normally get around 120 inches of snow. With less snow, we have less water from melted snow and have had some pretty dry days too which attribute to the drought. All in all, we are down quite a bit as opposed to normal.

The percentage short we are is around 30% less than normal says NYUP. But if we keep getting dry days as we have been for the last week and a half, the number could potentially slip even further.

NYUP does have a map showing which part of the state is the worst and Utica-Rome is actually pretty close to it. Check it out here.