Green Jersey

Low rainfall (yes, really) raises drought concerns

While it’s been raining for the past handful of days, rainfall during the first four months of this year was well below normal, the Bergen Record reported yesterday — raising concerns of drought conditions this summer. The first three months of 2009 were the second driest on record for New Jersey, according to the newspaper.

“The whole state is dry when you look at the last 90 days,” Dave Robinson, the state climatologist headquartered at Rutgers, told the Record. “And North Jersey is the driest. The groundwater is low. The stream flows are low. And the precipitation has been low.”

The state DEP rates stream flows in North Jersey as “extremely dry,” says the newspaper; following this week’s rain, the DEP upgraded the groundwater flow to “moderately dry” from “severely dry.”

Read the full story here.