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Severe shortage of rainfall brings drought conditions to southeast Ohio’s usually wet summer
By: Isabelle Isco
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Athens, Ohio (WOUB) — It’s been a hot and humid summer, the perfect ingredients for rain. So, where has all the rain gone?
June is usually the rainiest month in southeast Ohio with July not trailing much behind.
But this June, Athens saw just 1.13 inches of rain, 3.5 inches less than average June rainfall. And three weeks into July, total rainfall is a little over an inch, also well below average.
The lack of precipitation has resulted in three straight weeks of drought in southeast Ohio – and lots of brown lawns.
“We’ve had several days here in a row that have been 90 degrees,” said Ryan Fogt, a climatologist and meteorology professor at Ohio University. “It’s really kind of uncommon actually for Ohio.”
What has changed this summer is the positioning of a high-pressure heat dome.
“It is an anomaly,” Fogt said. “It’s kind of a unique event that could happen any year. But the high heat, the high humidity and the lack of storms all go hand in hand to leading to the drought.”
“The jet stream is normally farther north this time of year,” he said, “but what we normally would see is at least the ability for convection and thunderstorms to develop. But this summer, because of high pressure, it’s really suppressed a lot of that, especially in our area.”
The high-pressure system traps a lot of moisture and heat and prevents it from rising, where it would cool and condense into rainfall. It situated itself over the Ohio Valley and Appalachia and hasn’t budged.
“The high pressures tend to reinforce themselves,” Fogt said. “They are very large, they are very stable, they move slower if they move at all. And so, we really need a potent system to come through that’s going to remove the heat dome.”
Ohio has 14 counties affected by level two, or severe, drought. Thirty-seven counties are in level one, or moderate, drought. And all other counties are under abnormally dry weather conditions except for northwest Ohio, which received residual rain from Hurricane Beryl.
Right now, when the much-needed relief will arrive is anyone’s guess. Until a strong enough system makes its way through, and sticks around, the unusually dry summer will continue.
If the summer ends without much more rain, the coming season is unlikely to bring much relief. Fall is statistically the driest season in southeast Ohio.