Rain Likely to Dampen Area But Not Douse the Drought

As of 11 p.m., .86 inches of rain had fallen at Reagan National Airport. Dulles International Airport got nearly two-thirds of an inch, and Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport got a little more than half an inch.

But the rain deficit is significant, about 10 inches for the year at National Airport. Water-use restrictions remain in effect in Manassas and Loudoun County, and September and October have been especially arid.

Things are even worse farther south, with rain deficits of more than 20 inches in parts of Tennessee and more than 25 inches in some Alabama cities.

Strong said that the Washington region is stuck between the typical summer thunderstorm season and the precipitation that can come with big storms in late fall and winter. Early-fall dryness can be mitigated by hurricanes, he said, but this year, nothing substantial came to the area.

Strong said this appears to be the most sustained regional drought since the one of 2000 to 2002.

Most of the area's trees are hardy enough to withstand periods of a few months' drought, said Koehn, of the Maryland Forest Service. But trees in already dry soil at the tops of ridges, or those that have been defoliated by insects, could be dangerously stressed by the drought and predisposed to disease, he said.

The drought has dramatically affected farmers. "All of our crops in Virginia are going to be impacted or have been impacted," said Riddell, of the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

"Our producers are scrambling for feed and hay for their animals," he said. "In most cases this time of year, there's been rainfall and grazing. It's been nonexistent in many areas."

The drought has killed the nutritious high-volume grasses that livestock thrive on and has allowed weeds such as broom sedge and wiregrass to grow. "In a year like this, when the grass is diminished and, in some cases, dies out, weeds and other plants will take its place," Riddell said.

Most years, livestock can graze until December, when farmers must start feeding them hay, he said. This year, "many of our producers have been feeding all through the summer and fall," he said.

The lack of good food can also affect the animals' ability to reproduce. "Animals won't get bred and conceive if they're not at a certain level of nutrition," he said.

The effect is similar on horses, said Martin O. Furr, professor of internal medicine at the Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Leesburg. "Most of them are forage-fed," he said. "They're turned out in grass or they're fed hay."

Now, he said, "they're standing around on bare dirt, almost."

"This kind of drought leads to pastures being overgrazed and really puts them under stress," Furr said. "It's probably going to take a few years for the hay and forage to rebound. . . . If this continues through the winter, the spring grass is not going to grow well."

And that could be a problem for foals and their mothers. Without good spring grass, he said, "foals might not grow as fast, and they might be a little smaller than normal."

But landscapes, especially in the East, often weather droughts well, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist at the drought mitigation center at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

"The fact is that droughts are very cumulative in nature," he said. "The natural system has the ability to withstand quite a few blows. . . . It takes a long time to build up a long-term deficit."

And droughts in the East are often shortened by tropical weather, Svoboda said. The Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean "give two opportunities" to reduce the effects of prolonged dryness, he said.

But not this year.

Svoboda was cautious about attributing recent droughts to climate change. "You've got to be careful," he said. "We've had these drought cycles that go back eons. So it's not anything new."

Still, lawns and plants have dried out across the region.

"In my yard, I'm losing some of my shrubs because of these droughts," said Doug LeComte, a drought specialist with the Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center. "I'm sure a lot of people are."

"I'm wondering when I can start planting palm trees in my back yard instead of dogwoods," he joked. "It's a little too early for that."