Published May 08. 2026 02:45PM<\/p>\n
The majority of Pennsylvania\u2019s 67 counties are no longer under drought warnings, according to the latest information from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.<\/p>\n
Even though 42 counties have been moved to \u201cnormal\u201d status \u2014 up from 20 in early April \u2014 most of the local area remains under a drought watch.<\/p>\n
The latest information from DEP\u2019s Drought Task Force notes that 20 counties, including Carbon, Monroe, Northampton and Schuylkill, are in a drought watch.<\/p>\n
The four\u2019s status remains unchanged since early April.<\/p>\n
Lehigh County had its status improved to a drought watch from a drought warning.<\/p>\n
The remaining five counties are under drought warnings. No counties are in drought emergencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cConditions have improved across western Pennsylvania,\u201d DEP noted. \u201cHowever, there is still significant recovery needed in many areas of Pennsylvania, and why Watch and Warning Declarations continue in many counties.\u201d<\/p>\n
DEP noted that other areas of Pennsylvania may also be experiencing localized drought issues. As a result, residents are encouraged to voluntarily conserve water.<\/p>\n
At the beginning of the year, Schuylkill, Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton counties were under drought warnings, and Monroe County was in a drought watch.<\/p>\n
The National Weather Service notes that Carbon County typically receives about 13.7 inches of precipitation by this time of year, and is about 1.6 inches behind.<\/p>\n
Schuylkill County, which sees an average of 12.7 inches of precipitation by now, is 1.6 inches behind.<\/p>\n
Monroe is about 1.6 inch short of its average of 13.7 inches, and Lehigh has a deficit of 1.4 inches from its usual 12.5 inches. The National Weather Service notes that each of those four counties are between 11 and 25 percent below average.<\/p>\n
Northampton County is seeing about 1.1 inch less than its usual 12.9 inches of precipitation, or about 10 percent below average.<\/p>\n
To determine drought declarations, DEP looks at stream flow, groundwater levels, precipitation and soil moisture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published May 08. 2026 02:45PM The majority of Pennsylvania\u2019s 67 counties are no longer under drought warnings, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-187423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}