Mark Herz: This is GBH’s Morning Edition.
Drought conditions are persisting across Massachusetts and the Northeast. To learn more, GBH Meteorologist Dave Epstein sat down with Vandana Rao, Director of Water Policy for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and the Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Drought Management Task Force.
Dave Epstein: Vandana, good to have you here this morning.
Vandana Rao: Thank you for having me. Good morning.
Epstein: As a meteorologist and a gardener, I’m definitely interested in the fact that sometimes we have drought and sometimes we have too much rain and we are still officially in a drought. I know your office does a lot with notifying the public about such things. Can you tell me a little bit about what you are responsible for and how the office works?
Rao: Sure. At the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, we look at a vast spectrum of environmental issues. I oversee most matters related to drought for the state. We do a lot of monitoring across the Commonwealth on several different parameters. Some of them we monitor ourselves. For other data, we rely on some of the federal information or other agencies that provide us with on the ground impacts. All of that gets taken into consideration by a drought management task force that assesses these conditions for each of our seven regions across the Commonwealth. We’ve divided up the state into seven regions, each of those regions behave differently or experience precipitation and drought impacts differently. So yes, we are still in a drought, although it may feel like we’re not. Drought is a long-term condition. It’s not something that responds or happens quickly because of a particular rainfall event or the lack of rainfall over a short period of time.
Epstein: In terms of the effects of the current drought, what’s it gonna take for us to get out of the drought? How’s the math work?
Rao: We could take any period of time and some things can just come out in the wash, right? So we want to see what has been happening to change conditions. At what point of time did precipitation start to decrease and dry conditions start to set in? And how long is that lasting? So in this particular drought, it certainly started in August. When we look back between then and now, we’re certainly still in a deficit, although the last two months have really helped. We also look not just at precipitation, we want to see what happens to that precipitation once it hits the ground, because what is important to know from a hydrological perspective is how much of that water has really gotten into the rest of our systems. How much has come, has seeped into the ground, how much is in our streams, and how much in the atmosphere. So temperature also plays a role there. This time of the year, as we’re thawing out of winter, The ground is still not fully thawed. So what may seem like plenty of water, it’s only because some of this precipitation that’s coming in is just on the surface. It’s not seeping in as yet and that’s why it feels wetter, or that wetness lasts longer on the surfaces because the ground still needs to take some time to thaw for that water to go down.
Epstein: Could you talk about the fact that, obviously, we’re warming up and how climate and the warming climate is playing a role in either exacerbating droughts or bringing on more droughts? Because the long-term climate models actually show more precipitation overall in the Northeast, but how we get that precipitation may be different.
Rao: That’s absolutely right. We’re already seeing those changes. It’s not just something that will occur in the future. What we’ve seen as trends in the last 30 years or so is already pointing to that change. So, on average, on an annual basis, we are getting more precipitation now than we got even 15 or 20 years ago. Back in the early 2000s, it was considered as 44 inches of annual rainfall here in Massachusetts. Now it’s already at 48. We’re also getting more rain in the form of these shorter, intense burst events. It’s not spread out evenly throughout the months.
We’re all seeing, as you experienced this winter itself and in the last several winters -- we don’t see as much snow anymore in the winter. A lot of the precipitation that’s coming down in the winter is in the form of rain, and temperature obviously is a big driver. But having said that though, the predictions are also that, while that is happening, we will be experiencing very likely more droughts and more sharp to medium-term droughts, and there could be even longer-term droughts. Of course, we’re doing better monitoring, we are able to assess conditions better but it’s not just us, the entire Northeast is experiencing these types of droughts a lot more.
Epstein: Well, Vandana, thank you so much for being here this morning. Lots of great information and greatly appreciated.
Rao: Thank you so much for covering this topic. Appreciate that.
Herz: Dave will be sharing creative ways to limit water consumption during this drought, including the use of native plants in your garden, coming soon. So stay tuned. You're listening to GBH.
Drought and dry conditions are persisting across several parts of the Northeast, including Massachusetts. Recent precipitation has only helped so much to recover from significant deficits.
“Drought is a long-term condition; it’s not something that responds or happens quickly because of a particular rainfall event or the lack of rainfall over a short period of time,” said Vandana Rao, director of water policy at the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Rao is also co-chair of the Massachusetts Drought Task Force.
The state’s latest data found that the Central, Southeast, Western and Connecticut River Valley regions are experiencing mild drought, deemed level 1 status under the Massachusetts Drought Management Plan. The Northeast region of the state and the Cape and islands are currently at level 2 status, indicating significant drought.
Rao said her office has been monitoring several different points of data since the drought began in August 2024.
“So when we’re looking at our deficits, we’re really looking at those deficits from the point of time when that deficit started to go below normal,” she said. “We also look not just at precipitation, but what happens to that precipitation once it hits the ground.”
She added that dry conditions and drought can also manifest in the way water seeps into the ground, enters local bodies of water, and even the atmosphere.
“Once we get into the summer months and temperature goes up, that really starts to play a very significant role on the amount of moisture that’s available and less moisture that is available in the air,” she said. “The drying potential increases and fire danger can increase.”
During the spring months, the ground is still thawing from winter, which impacts water absorption and gives the illusion that the drought is over, Rao said.
“You can imagine [drought] as a big reservoir or a big tub of water,” she said. “It takes some time to fill that up, but it’ll take some time at that same rate of filling in if you’re trying to get the water out of it. … It’s this big repository that is slower to move, but once it comes out, we’re definitely in the clear.”
According to the U.S. Geological Survey , climate change has “further altered the natural pattern of droughts,” making them more severe and more frequent in the United States. At the same time, long-term climate models show that the Northeast is seeing more precipitation overall in the last 15 years.
Rao said those trends are reflected in Massachusetts. Her office found that seven of the past nine years have had at least six months of some level of drought in Massachusetts. That compares to almost no drought recorded in the prior 15-16 year period.
“Back in the early 2000s, we saw 44 inches of annual rainfall here in Massachusetts — now it’s already at 48,” she said. “So we are getting more rain. We’re also getting more rain in the form of these shorter, intense burst events. It’s not spread out evenly throughout the months, as much as it was in the past.”
Rao said officials are hoping to get back to a phase of “relatively normal rainfall,” but it’s hard to tell at this stage when that might happen.
“We don’t have a crystal ball, but we know that with the way the climate is changing, we’ll be experiencing more of those extremes,” she said. “More floods, more intense rain, as well as more droughts.”
As for what residents can do to limit their water consumption during the ongoing drought, Rao suggested taking shorter showers, fixing leaks in your home, and opting for native plants that don’t require extra water.
