{"id":224995,"date":"2026-04-09T15:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/224995\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T15:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T15:53:07","slug":"tallahassee-needs-a-long-soaking-rain-to-quench-the-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/224995\/","title":{"rendered":"Tallahassee needs a long soaking rain to quench the drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tallahassee got some rain this week. It was welcome, and we need a lot more to quench the drought<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Conditions are so dry that burn bans and water restrictions are in effect to various degrees around Florida.<\/p>\n

The Big Bend is experiencing the worst level of drought<\/a>, a level 4 according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.<\/p>\n

The drought is the topic of this week\u2019s Speaking Of.<\/p>\n

A weekly deep dive into Tallahassee’s most talked about news topic. Hosted by Gina Jordan every Thursday.<\/p>\n

Ironically, when I asked Ryan Bass about this, his Moccasin Grove farm<\/a> was getting a shower.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first one in a while, and it’s actually on some very good looking strawberries this morning,\u201d Bass said. \u201cI have a u-pick that starts in about 20 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bass and his wife established the business five years ago between Tallahassee and Monticello off Moccasin Gap Rd. at 9214 Herold Hill Rd.<\/p>\n

Bass has a deep well to take care of watering his crops. He says his farm business is okay right now, but he understands this drought is a problem for others.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people, they need this rain and they need the grass to grow to have their animals graze pasture and stuff like that,\u201d Bass says. \u201cSo a lot of people are praying for rain and hoping that we can get a lot just to kind of get us back up to\u2026average.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are in a significant rainfall deficit, and it will take a lot of rain to change that. Even worse, when the ground is extremely dry, it may not be able absorb water efficiently.<\/p>\n

The National Drought Mitigation Center<\/a> says if the dry weather persists long enough, water reservoirs and wells can run dry, potentially leading to water emergencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince January 1, we’re in the hole between seven and eight inches of rainfall. But that’s not the whole story,\u201d says Meteorologist Andrew Wulfeck from the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network<\/a>. \u201cLast year we finished about 13 inches in the hole. So if you add those up, we’re about 20 inches in the hole (in Tallahassee), and that is a lot of rainfall to be down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forecasters see more dry months ahead. Hurricane season starts June 1st, and it may weirdly be our best option for relief.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way I think we’re going to be able to make up that deficit is if we have a slow moving tropical cyclone,\u201d Wulfeck says. \u201cJust a tropical depression, maybe a tropical storm, but slow moving is the key. And if that were to go across the area, we could easily get rid of these deficits.\u201d<\/p>\n

A range of impacts can result from a drought, like ponds drying up and sinkholes opening up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have like a private well, those dry up first during this type of drought, and then the concern grows to aquifer,\u201d Wulfeck says. \u201cAs the water depletes underneath us, it opens up these new holes. So sinkholes start popping up. That’s relatively common when we have extremes, when we have the wet extremes and when we have the dry extremes.\u201d<\/p>\n

WFSU Ecology Blog and Coast to Canopy podcast Rob Diaz de Villegas recently visited Lake Elberta<\/a> to see a pair of new sinkholes that have residents concerned.<\/p>\n

We talk much more about all of this on Speaking Of. Click LISTEN above to hear the full discussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tallahassee got some rain this week. It was welcome, and we need a lot more to quench the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-224995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}