Fay Vs. The Drought, Central PA Drought Pics
UPDATE: The new NMM precip map pushes rain a little further east in PA.
ORIGINAL POST:
No matter how you slice it, parts of Central Pennsylvania are in a short-term drought. Other parts of the East are in a big long-term drought. What affect has Fay had, and will she have? Read on.
Starting locally, the grass is dead in most yards around State College, Pennsylvania, home of AccuWeather HQ [Google Map] (see pics below from AccuWeather HQ - even worse than those I took last year). Further to the north and east in Centre County, however, in Bellefonte and Milesburg, the grass is greener, as they have had a little rain lately, and had the benefit of multiple storms in late July that missed us.
Here are some stats from our local situation:
- No Rain at Penn State in the Last Two Weeks - Only 0.03" in the Last 21 Days at the Airport - Total Precip 0.42" in August at the Airport (normal is 3.37") - Total Precip 0.50" at AccuWeather HQ in the last 32 days
I've taken the NOAA 14-day NWS Gauge-Adjusted Doppler-Precip map below and removed amounts less than 0.10", because it's clear to me that these estimates, even though they should take both radar and gauge into account, they are clearly being polluted on the lower end by radar clutter.
The remnants of Tropical Storm Fay will affect us Thursday, but believe it or not, it looks like they might miss us too! That big high pressure system over the Northeast just won't budge! While this map shows us on the edge with no rain through tonight, this map infers that we still may get a good dose tomorrow... but the overnight run of the NMM Forecast Model [JessePedia] says no - the rain will not reach east of Central PA.
The drought is not limited to here, of course, and long term droughts are going on elsewhere. I'm just reporting on what we're seeing locally. You can see the map above showing near zero rain amounts since August 16th in Scranton, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Richmond; in Michigan, Jackson County is looking at possibly their driest ever August. Down south, Fay has corrected the drought, and more in some situations. Here's some info from William Schmitz (Service Climatologist/Meteorologist @ the NOAA Southeast Regional Climate Center)
Charlotte also broke their wettest day on-record (previously set during a Hurricane in 1893), with 5.36 inches of rain yesterday. And William just reported that KIGX (Chapel Hill, NC) "just reported a 19-minute interval with 1.12 inches of rain!"
Below you can compare the (before Fay) drought map with the (after Fay) estimated rainfall. Note that it wasn't a slam dunk, but small areas in the worst drought area were helped considerably.
But in Australia... it's a "Man Drought"
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