DANVILLE, Pa. — Much of Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania is under drought conditions, with our area experiencing a historically dry October and an extremely dry November.
The National Weather Service issued a fire weather watch and warning for much of the southern part of our area, effective from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST Friday, because of the combination of dry fuels, high winds, and low humidity.
The following counties under a fire weather warning are:
- Carbon County
- Monroe County
The following counties under a fire weather watch are:
- Union County
- Snyder County
- Northumberland County
- Montour County
- Columbia County
- Schuylkill County
Thursday marks two weeks of not a single raindrop at Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport, and no rain is expected until Sunday.
If you step outside, you may notice how dry it is from the crunching of leaves, brown spots in your yard, and low river levels. Steve Seman is an Associate Professor of Meteorology at Penn State.
He says many factors contribute to the dry weather we've been having.
"When you have a prolonged stretch of dry weather, it's usually a very persistent weather pattern that takes hold, it's very repetitive, and in this case, it's been repetitive areas of high pressure bringing in dry air from Canada and just really haven't given us many opportunities for rainfall or at least widespread rainfall," said Steve Seman, Associate Professor of Meteorology Penn State.
Some counties throughout the Commonwealth are either under a drought watch or warning. Depending on the municipality, burn bans are in place. Some places need more rain than others for drought conditions to ease up.
"For the Scranton area actually the rainfall for the year is actually close to normal for the year. It's just that it was very, very wet followed by dryness; other parts down towards Philadelphia, they're actually running several inches behind normal for the entire year at this point, so you'd certainly need several good soaking rains to really start to get back on track," said Seman.
Seman says dry weather during the fall isn't uncommon, but it can be dangerous. The weather also fuels many brush fires, like the one on Blue Mountain in Northampton County.
"We've had a number of windy days which allows fires to spread rapidly so that can create a dangerous situation, and fire season in the eastern United States is actually usually more typical in the springtime, so this time of year it's a little bit less common, but we're certainly seeing that risk right now," said Seman.
The Stormtracker 16 team says rain is likely to return in the second half of the weekend.