Moderate drought?????

Eric Patterson

Eric Patterson

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Staff member
According to http://drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html we in Alabama are under a "moderate drought". Zoom in a little more and my area is under severe drought (http://drought.unl.edu/dm/DM_state.htm?AL,SE). I for one would hate to see what the higher levels are like. We avg 60" a year. I heard yesterday we are 40" behind for the past 12 months and they are considering rationing water if things don't change. The rivers are very low and my yard looks like it does in August. Pollen counts are way high and while cutting the mostly dead grass yesterday it created a dust storm.

A large amount of the pothole reegion seems to be in a similar condition according to the above website. It is that bad?
 
Still didn't stop the TVA from drawing down the river to deal with spring melt flooding did it? Will wonders never cease?
 
DOwn here in Mobile, we are about 10" behind since Jan 1, not sure about the running 12 month total. My yard is parched. I just planted the garden and I have to water it every day.
The only good thing is that the fishing in the Bay is way ahead of schedule and really turning on.
But if the drought persists, our grassbeds will not be able to recover from the last three years of hurricanes followed by droughts.
 
I guess we will have all the ducks this year in Michigan...the lake is up highest since I owned the property and all the rivers here are bulging. My yard is like mud..of course the snow and ice just went off last week. Carl, all this water around me ends up at your place eventually.
 
Carl

Why is the drought bad on your millfoil? Does the salinity become too great in the bay? Here drought is good for the millfoil, which by the way is being overtaken by hydrilla. Lack of rain means less turbidity and the vegetation grows deeper and faster. In the late mid to late 80s is looked like you could walk across the lake. The nav channel was clearly marked by the two strips of millfoil on each side. It hasn't been like that in almost 20 years.
 
60" a year!? I think in one of the wetter years around here we had about 36" and it seemed like it was raining all the time. SD ranges from about 15" to 25" a year, one or two big rains can make a huge difference.

Eastern SD is pretty good now. We had a respectable amount of snow on the ground at the end of winter and we just had some nice spring showers over the weekend. Looks like there is a good chance for some more rain middle of the week. Hopefully the predicted precipitation for western SD and all of WY shows up. They are drier then a popcorn fart.
I have no idea what ND is like but is doesn't look good on that map.

Tim
 
Eric,
You hit it right on the head, the hurricanes piled saltwater into the lower delta and salt-shocked the milfoil (we have very little hydrilla, it is very salt intolerant). Then it was followed up by a sever drought which decreased freshwater inflow and the bay & lower Delta became very salty. But even before Ivan & Katrina, our milfoil has been dying back steadily for about the last 6 years.
However, milfoil is actually not our "favored" grass. Eelgrass (Vallisneria sp) is the native grass here and make up most of the grassflats south of the interstate. In good years, we have carpets of it in water up to 4' deep out south. Also some Ruppia (wigeongrass) too. After Katrina, the eelgrass tops were scourded and then the drought stressed it even more. So it really died back. Even if it stays salty, it will slowly recover but we need a wet year to help it along. Mobile Bay & Delta is turbid already, so the extra rainfall doesn't do much to water clarity.
When the milfoil dies back, eelgrass re-establishes in the lower delta as well, along with a variety of other native species. Milfoil is great duck food, but I would rather have a mix of natives like we are supposed to have.

Here is something I found online this morning:
4. Tennessee Valley Sets 117 Year Drought Record - According to the Tennessee Valley Authority, the time span between December, January and February in the Tennessee Valley has been the driest in the 117 years of record keeping. Beyond the Tennessee Valley region, National Weather Service hydrologist Brian stated in the Birmingham News that northeast Alabama and the southern Cumberland Plateau counties in Tennessee are even drier and are in a severe drought.

Moving South, in the Birmingham region, January and February were the driest since 1986 and is 7 inches below normal rainfall, according to Scott Unger, a meteorologist for the Weather Service. The dry weather has resulted in a number of wildfires. Since the beginning of wildfire season on March 1, there have been 780 fires that have burned over 18,500 acres according to the Forestry Commission.

 
This is from the NWS-Mobile website. If the current weather pattern perists, we are heading in the same direction:

...2006 YEAR IN REVIEW...

...16TH DRIEST YEAR ON RECORD...
SOUTHWEST ALABAMA, SOUTHEAST MISSISSIPPI AND NORTHWEST FLORIDA
STARTED 2006 VERY DRY AND WARM. A MAJORITY OF THE AREA WAS
CLASSIFIED UNDER A MODERATE TO EXTREME DROUGHT BY THE SUMMER.
HOWEVER...THE SECOND HALF OF THE YEAR BROUGHT COOLER TEMPERATURES
ALONG WITH NORMAL TO ABOVE NORMAL RAINFALL. THIS WAS MAINLY DUE TO
THE RETURN OF EL NINO CONDITIONS ACROSS THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC WHICH
CAUSED AN ENHANCED SOUTHERN BRANCH TO THE JET STREAM OVER THE AREA.
SYSTEMS EMBEDDED IN THIS ENHANCED JET STREAM BROUGHT MORE CLOUDS AND
PRECIPITATION TO THE AREA. THE AVERAGE YEARLY TEMPERATURE WAS 68.0
DEGREES...1.2 DEGREES ABOVE THE NORMAL OF 66.8 DEGREES.
TOTAL RAINFALL WAS 49.35 INCHES...16.94 INCHES BELOW THE NORMAL OF
66.29 INCHES. THIS MADE 2006 THE 16TH DRIEST YEAR ON RECORD. THIS
COMPARES WITH A VERY WET 2005 IN WHICH 73.83 INCHES FELL ON THE PORT
CITY.
 
Our watersheds is only Alabama and parts of Georgia, MS & TN, so the rainfall up north does not effect us much. However, is anywhere in North AL south of the TN River Valley gets rain, we eventually get it down here.
Right now the lack of rain is a mixed blessing, I like the fishing right now but want grassbeds for the ducks this winter.
 
It's been bone dry in Hattiesburg this month, but prior to that seemed like we got plenty of rain. It's La Nina. Bad, bad sign. Let's cross our fingers that the monsoon kicks up on schedule, otherwise we are S.O.L. for hurricane season.

Ed.
 
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