A little more than a third of the country is experiencing some level of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The worst-hit areas include parts of Arizona, Utah and California, as well as some regions of Texas. But areas in New Jersey, Delaware and Massachusetts are also seeing extreme drought, and much of the East Coast is currently in a moderate drought.
While this is somewhat new for those East Coasters, the West has been dealing with drought for years. But that’s not the only difference between drought in the East and drought in the West.
Andrea Thompson, associate editor for earth and the environment at Scientific American, has written about this and joined The Show to discuss, starting with what some of those differences are.
Full conversation
ANDREA THOMPSON: So a lot of it comes down to there being kind of two different climates, the western half of the United States versus the eastern. The western is generally more arid. You have kind of a more distinct wet and dry season. So rain and snow tend to fall during a certain time period, generally from late fall into early spring.
You know, if you don’t get any rain or snow in that time period by around April 1, you’re kind of done for the year. Whereas in the eastern half of the U.S., it rains all the time, any month of the year. There’s no distinct season for water. And that means that the way drought sort of happens is a little different.
So in the West, water is really heavily managed. You have reservoirs — Lake Mead, like Powell, some of the reservoirs in California — and those sort of traps, the water that falls in the winter to be used throughout the spring and summer. And if you don’t have enough come April 1, you kind of make these, decisions about how much water to allocate. But you know, “OK, we’re going to be dry for the next few months.”
Whereas in the East, we have no idea. Is it going to be dry for the next six weeks, the next three months? There’s not a lot of predictability there. And because of the way the climate is in the East — I’m in New York City. We’re in the middle of a drought warning right now, the first in 20 years. It’s still rained some in the last couple of weeks, but we’re still in a drought because we’ve had enough of a period, six weeks, where we didn’t have any rain, that we just really started to tap into the dry conditions.
The water reservoir that feeds New York City is much lower capacity than it typically is. And so it can all just happen a lot faster in the, in the eastern United States than it typically does out West.
MARK BRODIE: Well, it almost sounds like even though the news might not be as good, it’s almost easier to plan in the West than it is in the east for reduced water.
THOMPSON: In some ways, because you sort of know, “All right, here at the beginning of the water year, if this is how much we have, here’s how much you get, here’s how much you get.”
You know, obviously the problems come with the water system was sort of set up during an unusually wet climate period, which we are not in right now. So there’s sort of more water allocated and actually exists, which is the problem.
But in general, if there was a better handle on those allocations, yeah, you’d kind of be able to do a little long term planning because you’d know how much you started the dry season with. Whereas you don’t know in the East, like, is it going to rain 10 days from now? Because weather forecasts just aren’t that precise that far out.
BRODIE: Well, I grew up in New England, and the old saw always was, “If you don’t like the weather right now, just wait a minute. It’ll change.”
THOMPSON: Exactly. Yeah. And we had a little gust, a snow squall that went through New York City briefly yesterday. And then nothing.
BRODIE: Well, so I guess that sort of raises the issue of perception too, right? If you walk around or drive around the West, you’ll see riverbeds that are dry and have been for quite a while. But on the East Coast, there are streams and rivers and bodies of water that look perfectly healthy.
And you’re also in an area that isn’t used to being in a drought situation, or not having as much rain or snow or precipitation. So I wonder if the perception and just sort of the fact that this is so new in that area plays into this too.
THOMPSON: I think that’s definitely some of it. You know, the way I think people who live in the West are sort of used to thinking about water as a limited commodity, to some extent. Whereas that’s just you. I grew up on the East Coast. I lived here all my life. And it’s just always there. You don’t have to think about it.
Now, there have been droughts. Certainly there’s a major drought of record from the 1960s in New England. There was a terrible drought in the Southeast in 2016 where there were wildfires in eastern Tennessee. So they do happen. It’s just less of a thing that’s sort of always on our minds in this half of the country.
And there are places — so there are some reservoirs and some streams and stuff around the region that’s clearly impacted by drought, where they really are low down. If you see them, you'll notice there was, in New Jersey, a reservoir where a bridge from the 19th century, an old stone bridge has, sort of emerged because the water level has gone down so drastically.
So there are sort of spots like that. But in New York City, you’re looking out at the Hudson and the East River. You’re not going to notice the difference there. Although I have noticed one thing: Going into some of the parks, it’s really dry and dusty in a way it typically isn’t.
BRODIE: So I’m wondering if some of these differences are affecting the way that policymakers are trying to deal with the fact that they're getting less water and maybe try to encourage residents to deal with the fact that they have less water.
THOMPSON: Yeah. It’s possible. It’s interesting. So we're in a drought warning in New York City. There are various sort of levels — whether they call it a warning or have asked for water restrictions or things. It’s very localized. Some of it could be at the state level, some of it’s very local. There are some places in Massachusetts that are having to port in water from somewhere else.
I think if you probably ask the average person, just walking down the street, if they knew if we were in a drought warning, I don’t know that many of them would. Because because all the restrictions are voluntary right now and because it’s not part of the culture. I don’t think people think about it.
BRODIE: I want to ask you about something that I know is an issue here in the West, which is, for example, when it hasn’t rained for a long time and the ground is very hard and dry, that when it does rain, the ground is not able to absorb that water, and a lot of it just runs off and can’t really be used.
Are parts of the East in that situation yet, where it’s been warm and dry enough, where they’re not able to absorb the rain, or maybe even the snow, and you’re sort of seeing — I don’t want to call it waste — but you’re not able to get that absorption level?
THOMPSON: Yeah, I would say there are definitely spots. I can’t say super specifically, but, you would particularly see that in places where there’s been wildfire because of the way that kind of charred the ground and makes it even harder for it to absorb. So those would definitely be places where you’d have to watch for flash flooding, for less of that water to get absorbed.
I think if we had a serious downpour — and probably parts of these areas that are really in the deeper levels of drought — yeah, that would be a major concern, that the ground wouldn’t absorb it as readily as it might if this had been just a couple weeks into the dry period.
Because when there’s a big downpour, the ground is not as good at absorbing that anyway. And when you add the extreme dryness, it just makes it even harder.
