Yes, the WET, WET, STORRRRMY Winter of 09-10 turned OFF on April 1st--when it just turned HOT and DRY. We had virtually California-like 'Santa Ana' conditions in the first week of APRIL (mid 90's with dry and windy conditions). Since then, it just got more humid but without rain (typical summer thunderstorms were non-existent).Temps peaked in July in the low 100's. I am in the immediate NJ/NYC Metro Area but similar conditions were experienced from Virginia into New England. We still have drought watches and water restrictions but we just went though several days of rains, drizzle, clouds and cooler than normal conditions. So those pictures you posted would probably be much greener if taken today. Now, the forecast for the coming 7-10 day extended period is back to sunny, dry and low 90's--so we will probably break the record for days over 90 F. Autumn leaves will probably drop earlier and be less brilliant due to poor growing conditions for most of the growing season. I did notice that the trees and shrubs looked even worse in the Philly area. Still with a water deficit despite the recent rains but the Atlantic Ocean basin is filling up with hurricanes and tropical storms, so precip problems may be about to turn on a dime. Flooding be probably be the next issue in this crazy year!--Thanks for posting.

I don't know how much greener they'd be. It takes a while to wake the grass up from its dormancy, and trees generally aren't going to "regreen" this time of year. Even though it rained for several days, it wasn't a lot of rain either... most areas, maybe an inch or so.

Five inches of rain here! And at least in my yard, the grass is green again.--Which reminds me, time to mow again.:(

You were a lot luckier than people to your south :(

Here in Northern VA it has been very dry. We got 1 nice 2.25 inches in the middle of July, and that saved us. The last rain before that was the first week in May. We had two .7 inch rains also, and that's been it. I planted about 600 trees in the last three years, so I have been busy watering. A few older trees have suffered. I lost a few.

About half the crops here are gone or mostly gone. Yields way down where crops are still struggling. Across the road from us here the corn is completely dead and will produce absolutely nothing. We had one of the .7 rains three days ago--nothing in the forecast. 10 to 14 day outlook for below average precip. And for the time being, tropical storms are staying out in the Atlantic far east of the US coast. Will that pattern change? If so, we are on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mts here, and generally don't get much, if anything, from any coastal storm.

But rain here has been spotty--some areas not far away have fared better. Some of the storms have been small "hit or miss" affairs.

We had 7 days at or near 100, and I think has done a lot of the damage.

--spruce

Yes, lucky with that heavy soaking rain for a few days, then we had a day or two of heavy, constant drizzle, cloud cover and cooler than ave. temps (it averted an official declaration of a 'drought emergency' and more serious water restrictions. But weather patterns have reverted back to hot and DRY. Next 7-10 days, highs in the 90's without any cloud cover or any chances for rain. Normal, typical, summer thunderstorms (that tend to bring a lot of the summer rain), have just not occurred this Summer, period. September and October are often the driest months of the year and precip is highly dependent on tropical systems to the south. I don't know if this is going to be the new normal or if this year was just a fluke. Without irrigation, what grows well in weather like this except maybe grapes and prickly pears?!

We were in the red last year during the month of July. In 2008 in the red for August. I was trying to establish so many plants those two seasons...absolutely brutal.

I had 0.5" of rain that fell over a 20min period...thats all I got in the last 3 weeks. Tomorrow, I finally have to start watering plants that have been in the ground for a few years...some are showing signs of stress.

Here is a link that might be useful: NJ Drought

It's been dry in Eastern PA as well. Many stretches of highway are lined with brown trees. The lawns look terrible too. Interestingly, the lawns that usually look the best now look the worst. By "best", I mean uniformly lush and green, and neatly mowed. I guess the combination of the typical high nitrogen fertilizer and short mowing leaves the grass more vulnerable to drought.

Alex

Alexander3, I NEVER water my lawn/grass (nor use any pesticides or really fertilize regularly)--just by general principle and/or laziness, I'd rather use the water for trees and shrubs. Grass has good drought tolerance. My lawn actually looks quite green now (despite the weeds). We did get those 5 inches of rain in a couple of days but as I said, we are in another dry but beautiful weather pattern. Highs in 90's but last night it got down to a chilly 55 F. It feels like hurricane weather actually--calm, clear, warm and gorgious.--September is my favorite month of the year!

Most of central NJ has seen less than 6 inches of rain since June 1... and most of that was in mid July. Some areas have probably had less than 5 inches. Many places are looking at a near-record dry August with less than 1 inch total precip (I was mistaken earlier, most areas didn't even get 1 inch of rain from the system last week, more like a half inch).

A statement from the NWS regarding this summer in central NJ:

...WARMEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER ON RECORD AT TRENTON...

...FIFTH DRIEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER ON RECORD AT TRENTON...

...EIGHTH WARMEST AUGUST ON RECORD AT TRENTON...

...THIRD DRIEST AUGUST ON RECORD AT TRENTON...

...MOST DAYS IN A YEAR THAT REACHED OR EXCEEDED 90 DEGREES ON RECORD AT TRENTON...

METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER (JUNE, JULY AND AUGUST), 2010 IS THE WARMEST SUMMER ON RECORD WITH AN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF 77.67 DEGREES. THE PREVIOUS WARMEST SUMMER ON RECORD OCCURRED IN 1898, WHEN THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 76.47 DEGREES.

ALSO, METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER, 2010 IS THE FIFTH DRIEST SUMMER ON RECORD WITH 5.90 INCHES OF PRECIPITATION. THE DRIEST SUMMER ON RECORD OCCURRED IN 1966, WHEN 2.66 INCHES OF PRECIPITATION FELL.

AUGUST, 2010 TIES AUGUST, 1900 FOR THE EIGHTH WARMEST AUGUST ON RECORD WITH AN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF 77.1 DEGREES. THE WARMEST AUGUST ON RECORD OCCURRED IN 1895, WHEN THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 78.7 DEGREES.

ALSO, AUGUST, 2010 IS THE THIRD DRIEST AUGUST ON RECORD WITH 0.80 INCHES OF PRECIPITATION. THE DRIEST AUGUST ON RECORD OCCURRED IN 1964, WHEN 0.47 INCHES OF PRECIPITATION FELL.

FINALLY, THE TEMPERATURE THIS YEAR AT TRENTON HAS REACHED OR EXCEEDED 90 DEGREES ON 47 DAYS THROUGH AUGUST. THAT TIES 2010 WITH 1983 AS THE YEARS WITH THE MOST DAYS THAT HAVE REACHED OR EXCEEDED 90 DEGREES. THAT TIE WILL NOT LAST, BECAUSE THE TEMPERATURE AT TRENTON WILL EXCEED 90 DEGREES AGAIN TODAY.

TEMPERATURE RECORDS DATE BACK TO 1893. PRECIPITATION RECORDS DATE BACK TO 1866.

$$

THE TEN WARMEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMERS AT TRENTON DATING BACK TO 1893:

RANK TEMPERATURE YEAR
(DEGREES F)

1 77.67 2010
2 76.47 1898
3 76.27 1983
4 76.07 2005
5 75.97 1895
6 75.93 1896
6 75.93 1973
8 75.90 1966
9 75.83 1899
10 75.80 1893

THE TEN DRIEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMERS AT TRENTON DATING BACK TO 1866:

RANK PRECIPITATION YEAR
(INCHES)

1 2.66 1966
2 3.80 1957
3 5.48 1913
4 5.53 1874
5 5.90 2010
6 6.80 1929
7 7.02 1925
8 7.09 1976
9 7.11 1949
10 7.22 1912

THE TEN WARMEST AUGUSTS AT TRENTON DATING BACK TO 1893:

RANK TEMPERATURE YEAR
(DEGREES F)

1 78.7 1895
2 78.2 ...

Well, after those few days of rain, seems like we are back into the middle of our drought. SO DRY! Beautiful weahter, but day after day of sunny and warm = drought. i suspect we won't turn wet again until Winter. Looks like Fall is going to be quite dry at this rate. When did out climate turn Mediterranean!

We are officially in a severe drought here in the Northern Shenandoah Valley. You can check out the drought areas in the US at this site:

http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html

--spruce

Wow, the pictures are quite graphic, the plants look like they're suffering in the drought (and the wildlife suffers too). Amazing, because NJ is normally such a lush and green state (I lived there for a total of 12 years when younger). Hope you get some rain down there soon!

We had a relatively dry Spring and summer here in metro-west Boston, there were scattered storms but they often missed my town. We had no measurable rain at all for 6 weeks in mid-summer, ugh. Not as bad as it sounds like down in NJ/VA area, but that could be because our temperatures are more moderate up here.

We have finally gotten a bit of rain in the last 3 weeks, not a deluge, but enough to stop the trees from dropping leaves and perk the gardens up quite a bit.

I went up to the Blue Mountains last weekend when an unusually strong cold change came through. This is a photo of snow flurries in a sheltered gully at about 800m asl, with Cyathea australis and Eucalyptus oreades

{{gwi:427345}}

{{gwi:427346}}

{{gwi:427347}}