No relief in sight from Washington-area drought

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - There will be no relief anytime soon for the drought that is impacting Washington, Virginia and Maryland, said Douglas Le Comte, a drought specialist at the National Weather Service.

Only a half-inch to 1 inch of rain is expected in the region in the next five days, and nothing significant is expected for the next two weeks, Le Comte said.

The drought will not affect the residential water supply in the near future, but water conservation is always a good idea, said Jim Shell, a water planner with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

The Potomac River provides 90 percent of the drinking water for the Metropolitan Washington region, according to the council’s Web site. There are still reservoirs that can release water into the river, Shell said.

“The Potomac is a pretty robust system and it’s pretty reliable, historically,” he said.

The picture for farmers in the region is bleaker, De Comte said. In Virginia, 82 percent of the cropland has insufficient water to support plants, he said. Maryland has the nation’s highest proportion of dry crop topsoil, at 91 percent.

Dry conditions also are blamed for a forest fire that has burned for three weeks in Wicomico County, Md.

Water systems are local, so conserving water in Northern Virginia won’t help the southwest Virginia, said Bill Hayden, a spokesman from Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality.

Dry spells are normal and will go away eventually, he said

“Droughts don’t last forever, just like floods don’t last forever,” said Dan Soeder, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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