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Lakes across the Triangle are beginning to look like the surface of Mars. Though no one has been forced to emulate fictional astronaut Mark Watney and turn rocket fuel into water for survival, the Triangle is in the midst of the worst drought the region has seen in over a decade, one of the hardest hit areas in a state where every corner is experiencing some level of drought.
Corey Davis has spent his career understanding environmental scenarios like the one Triangle residents are facing today. With degrees in meteorology and atmospheric science, Davis serves as an assistant state climatologist at North Carolina State University’s Climate Office, “the primary scientific extension resource for weather and climate science for the state of North Carolina,” and leads the charge on drought and fire weather analysis for the North Carolina Drought Management Advisory Council.
We asked Davis to contextualize the current drought, what to expect moving forward, and how residents can best prepare themselves against these weather conditions, now and in the future.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
INDY: When did this drought officially begin?
Davis: The middle of last August is when we first started getting into a dry spell. Initially, it really wasn’t that big of a deal, because we had plenty of rain earlier in the summer last year, especially folks just west of the Triangle. Remember Tropical Storm Chantal? We got tons of rain from that system. Going into last fall, we really didn’t see any more tropical activity. I know folks don’t like tropical storms and hurricanes, but they are responsible for a decent chunk of our rainfall during that time of the year. This was the fifth fall in a row where we had gone into drought during that time of the year.
Now, folks remember the one big snow that we had at the end of January. … That snow did not really benefit us all that much. For one, this was one of those very dry powdery snows, so even though some places saw 10 or 12 inches, that amounted to less than an inch of liquid precipitation, but also because it stayed so cold for a week or so after that snow fell, the ground was frozen. None of that melting snow was able to infiltrate down into the ground. So going into the winter, we had most of the state in moderate drought conditions. That’s the lowest level of drought on the U.S. drought monitor. Unless you were a farmer who was trying to get your wheat fields planted last fall, you probably really didn’t notice the impacts of the dryness at that point.
By the end of February, we were mostly in severe drought conditions across the state. That’s the second level on the drought monitor scale. I think when most people really started to notice this drought was by late March, early April. So, when we hit that next level up,…
