We are at the mid-point of July, and so far this month we've had several stormy days which have produced flash flooding in some parts of our area.
Despite the heavy rain, the drought monitor still has most of our area in a moderate drought!
You may be wondering how it's possible to be in a drought when parts of the area have received over 200% of their average July rainfall so far!
Don't get me wrong...July has been a wet month! Even at BWI we are above normal for rainfall! But to figure out why we still have the moderate drought, we need to dig into the weeds a bit more!
The answer lies in the fact that the beginning of the year started out extremely dry! Heck...the first four months of the year were below normal in terms of rainfall! If we look at an annualized 'rainfall budget,' typically we put more into the soil during the spring months than what gets depleted through evaporation. This spring was the opposite, we put very little rain into the ground which meant we started summer behind the eight-ball!
Even though we've had a wet July, a lot of that water doesn't get absorbed into the soil because the sun angle is higher, meaning evaporation rates are higher, too! Moving forward, we will need to get an extended period of light to moderate rain in order to really put this drought to bed! But up until then, keep watering those plants!
