Drought warning lifted for more SWVA communities (copy)
Due to recent rainfall, the Drought Monitoring Task Force (DMTF) has recommended de-escalating the drought warning advisory to a drought watch advisory in 15 counties and 10 cities in the New River, Middle James, and York-James drought evaluation regions.
The recent rain has prevented drought conditions from worsening, although severe drought continues in many parts of Virginia, including the Roanoke River drought evaluation region.
The New River region includes Bland, Carroll, Floyd, Giles, Grayson, Montgomery, Pulaski, and Wythe counties and the cities of Galax and Radford.
This follows the DMTF moving the Big Sandy region, which includes Buchanan, Dickenson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Smyth, Tazewell, Washington, and Wise counties and the cities of Bristol and Norton, to a drought watch advisory.
The DMTF considered the following information in its advisory recommendations:
• Streamflow showed marked improvement over the past seven days in response to recent heavy rains in some areas. Small tributary watersheds on upper portions of the James, Shenandoah, and Roanoke River basins are still much below normal.
• Soil moisture has generally improved, with near normal conditions throughout much of the state, with exception to central portions along the Blue Ridge Mountains and portions of the Chowan Drought Evaluation Region, where below normal soil moisture conditions persist.
• Groundwater levels continue on a seasonal decline, with some small improvements noted in southeastern wells. Monitoring wells in Clarke, Patrick, Prince William, and Bedford County are at or near record low water levels.
• Reservoir levels across the Commonwealth were all within normal ranges, except for Smith Mountain Lake and John Kerr Reservoir, which remain much below normal for this time of year.
• Precipitation over the past 30 days was above normal for large portions of central, eastern, northern, and southwest Virginia, with totals ranging from 6 to 10 inches of rain. However, portions of south-central and western areas of the state received below-normal totals in the past 30 days — between 2 to 4 inches. The central third of Virginia is experiencing the largest areas of severe and extreme dryness.
Agricultural producers reported improvements in crop conditions throughout most of the state, although they anticipate smaller crop yields, reduced size of fruits and vegetables, as well as possible negative impacts to orchard production in future years. Producers in Rockingham County reported persistent dry conditions.
The seven-day forecast calls for near to below-normal totals of 0.25 to 0.75 inches in a broad central portion of the state, and above-normal totals up to 1.5 inches in localized southeastern, and southwestern areas of the state. The DMTF will meet again on Aug. 12.
Additional information on the current drought status is available on the DEQ drought webpage and Drought Dashboard, which includes interactive data on stream gages, groundwater wells, soil moisture, and precipitation.
