Rain postponed this year’s first meeting of the state task force that monitors drought conditions in Maine. That was in May, and so far the group has not needed to meet thanks to one of the wettest summers on record.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t.
The Maine Drought Task Force only meets when things are really dry in the state. That has certainly not been the case so far this year, which had one of the rainiest Junes in the past quarter-century.
Still, the possibility of drought, while slim, is not impossible this season.
“We almost met in mid-May when abnormally dry conditions seemed to be expanding,” said Samual Roy, natural hazards planner with Maine Emergency Management Agency and task force member. “However, this was followed by a week of some rainfall [and] ever since, conditions just continued to get wetter.”
The task force is made up of officials from state and federal agencies representing agriculture, emergency management, the weather service, public utilities and health providers. While there have been no official meetings, Roy did say members have been holding ongoing discussions to stay on top of conditions.
“I check the Northeast drought early warning system about once a week during non-drought periods to get a sense of trends,” Roy said. “Maine is a big state, and we often see different trends in different areas — that is not really true at the moment. Today the state is pretty evenly wet.”
Last year at this time, two-thirds of the state was in a drought. Only Aroostook County was not abnormally dry. A year before that, in 2021, eastern Maine escaped the worst of any drought while the rest of the state was seeing moderate or extreme drought conditions.
Parts or all of Maine has been under some sort of drought or abnormally dry conditions since 2014, according to the US Drought Monitor’s historical maps.
When monitoring conditions, Roy and his fellow task force members consider several variables that can point to a drought.
“The primary ones that are useful for determining the start of drought are basically precipitation trends over extended time and areas and stream flows and groundwater levels,” he said. “We also look at long term seasonal forecasts.”
Based on what they are seeing right now, Roy said they are not forecasting any drought anywhere in Maine this summer.
“Current stream flows and groundwater levels are above normal for most parts of Maine,” he said. “And currently the [weather] outlooks indicate no change in slightly above normal wet and warm conditions three to four weeks from now.”
At the same time, Roy said you can never say never when it comes to things like droughts.
It just takes a sudden period of lower than normal precipitation combined with high temperatures and high winds to create what’s called a flash drought — the rapid appearance of drought conditions.
All the task force can do is go by the best scientific information available and at the same time remain vigilant to abrupt changes.
“Remember, these outlooks are very general and are unable to forecast very rapid changes such as flash droughts,” he said. “So really anything could happen.”
