Marylanders may see some welcome rain this weekend, but it's not expected to fully reverse what has become the driest start to a calendar year in 138 years of record-keeping in Baltimore.
After nearly two months with only a few inches of snow and scant rainfall across most of Maryland, more than half the state officially fell into a drought this week.
Dry weather that began in October has left streams flowing at record or near-record lows for this time of year, hydrologists say. Water tables are falling when they should be recharging, and farm fields and pastures are growing short of the moisture they'll need to support early growth after planting this spring.
"The thing that's got me worried is that this is kind of setting up a lot like the 2002 drought," said Daniel J. Soeder, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Baltimore. "We could be looking at a repeat, maybe of a bit lesser severity than we saw in 2002."
Meteorologists blame the dry weather on a persistent dome of high pressure that settled over the eastern U.S. for the winter. The high pressure kept us mostly dry, while diverting the winter storm track to our west and north, over the Great Lakes and into New England.
"They've gotten a good amount of snow throughout New York, New England and places like that," said Richard Hitchens, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service's forecast office in Sterling, Va. Far Western Maryland also benefited from the storms.
This weekend's rain will help, as did the 0.36 inches that fell Thursday at BWI Marshall Airport. Baltimore could see as much as an inch more before it all ends Sunday - but that does not represent a shift in the larger pattern, Hitchens said. "Anything is better than nothing, but a couple hundredths of an inch, that's not going to fill your well up real high."
The long-range forecasts show more below-normal precipitation for April, he said, but no clear trend beyond that.
Maryland farmers remember the 2002 drought well. It cost them 20 to 80 percent of their crops and triggered federal drought disaster declarations in 21 of the state's 23 counties.
Municipal well systems in Western Maryland ran short or failed, and Baltimore's reservoirs fell to a record-low 41 percent of capacity. The city tapped the Susquehanna River to augment dwindling supplies.
