{"id":262010,"date":"2025-10-31T02:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T02:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/262010\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T02:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T02:57:11","slug":"extreme-drought-expands-in-southern-maine-despite-recent-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/262010\/","title":{"rendered":"Extreme drought expands in southern Maine, despite recent rain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A man in rain boots walks through a puddle at Rodney Bonney Memorial Park in Auburn on Oct. 8. Recent rain hasn\u2019t improved drought conditions for most of Maine, with Greater Portland now considered to be in extreme drought. (Libby Kamrowski Kenny\/Staff Photographer)<\/p>\n

Rain in late October improved drought conditions in Maine\u2019s western mountains but wasn\u2019t enough to stop extreme drought from expanding to cover much of the southern part of the state, including Portland, according to newly released data.<\/p>\n

All of coastal Maine \u2014 other than the southernmost tip of York County \u2014 is now in extreme drought, according to an update Thursday from the U.S. Drought Monitor. Nearly 43% of the state is experiencing extreme conditions, a jump from 36% a week ago. <\/p>\n

But more than 5 inches of rain fell last week in some parts of the western mountains \u2014 a beneficial soaking that moved some of Oxford and Franklin counties down a level from extreme to severe drought.<\/p>\n

Only northern Aroostook County and a small area in Penobscot and Oxford counties are in the less-severe moderate drought category, according to the drought monitor.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Despite the localized improvements, areas in extreme drought need another foot of rain before the ground freezes, said Sarah Jamison, senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service office in Gray.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very likely that we will be going into the winter season with some form of drought,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Once soils freeze, precipitation can no longer effectively recharge aquifers, and drought conditions would persist until the snow melts in the spring. A winter without much snow would be \u201cless than ideal,\u201d Jamison said. <\/p>\n

\u201cA snowy winter could go a long way to helping ease our current conditions,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Jamison said the state has moved into a wetter pattern of late, though southern coastal areas got only one-third to one-half of the precipitation typically expected in October.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a long way to go, but it\u2019s nice to see we\u2019re trending in a direction that will step by step start to recharge our system,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

The drought conditions have gripped much of Maine since the middle of August.<\/p>\n

The drought has caused smaller hay crops, shortened the season for many row crops, and could hurt next year\u2019s berry and tree fruit harvests. Poland Spring has started scaling back withdrawals at multiple sights because of dropping ground water levels.<\/p>\n

So far this year, 477 dry wells \u2014 including 113 in Oxford County \u2014 have been reported across Maine, according to the Maine Emergency Management Agency, which collects self-reported data<\/a> from well owners through an online survey. That\u2019s more than the past four years combined, according to state data.<\/p>\n

On Thursday night and Friday morning, many areas of Maine could see an inch of rain, while some lucky regions could get 2 inches, Jamison said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s much-needed rainfall and hopefully will clear out in time for trick-or-treaters<\/a>,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man in rain boots walks through a puddle at Rodney Bonney Memorial Park in Auburn on Oct.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-262010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}