A U.S. Drought Monitor map shows Western Massachusetts is somewhat better off drought-wise than the rest of the state.
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A pedestrian takes refuge from the rain under a large, multi-colored umbrella as she walks down High Street in Holyoke on April 22.SPRINGFIELD — The weather pattern that led to the abnormally dry conditions that have plagued the region this winter and early spring appears to have broken, CBS3 meteorologist Nick Morganelli said.
“The overall jet stream pattern is not a dry pattern that’s setting up right now,” Morganelli said, adding that more rain is expected for Western Massachusetts next Tuesday night into Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the weekend “looks great,” Morganelli said, adding there will be sunshine and daytime temperatures in the 60s through Monday.
Michael Rawlins, a manager of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, agreed that pattern of dry weather has changed for the better.
“It looks like the pattern we were under has broken,” said Rawlins, also an assistant professor at the university’s Department of Geoscience. “There is no reason to believe (the abnormally dry weather) is going to be an ongoing thing. I think the farming and the soil moisture should be OK provided we have normal precipitation.”
Data compiled by the Climate Prediction Center, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that normal rainfall for Hartford from January to April is 13.46 inches, Rawlins said.
What the region received for that period, however was 8.9 inches, Rawlins said. Things improved in April, however, when a total of 3 inches of rain fell in Hartford.
Normal rainfall for April is 3.72 inches, Rawlins said.
April’s rainfall got its most substantial boost on the 22nd and 23rd when some 2.76 inches fell in Hartford.
“That really helped,” said Rawlins, adding the region has so far received .8 of inch of rain this month
A map produced by the U.S. Drought monitor shows that Western Massachusetts is somewhat better off drought-wise than the rest of the state.
Much of Western Massachusetts, as of May 1, remained “abnormally dry” as opposed to the moderate and even severe drought recorded in the central and eastern regions of the state.
Rawlins said hydrologists consider a region to be under short-term drought conditions when soil moisture and the smaller streams are affected.
Long-terms droughts occur when groundwater levels and large reservoirs are affected. That has not occurred here and groundwater levels in the region remain above-average, Rawlins said.
