Winter not wet enough

By Hannah Wever
Review Staff Writer
Published: March 27, 2008

Around here this past winter, when it rained it didn’t pour-and that’s bad news because a wet winter could have given Orange County a good head start at replenishing its groundwater.
Plentiful and frequent snows which saturate the ground as they melt just never fell in the winter months, and that’s what the earth needed to bring its moisture levels up and prepare for a good growing season, according to Northern Piedmont Agricultural Research and Extension Center Superintendent Dave Starner.
“We have moisture in our soils, but it’s not the typical thing for this time of year where we’re up to our elbows in mud,” he said. “This winter was a dry winter and there was really no snow cover.”
Virginia Cooperative Extension Agent Steve Hopkins agreed.
“We have had a dry winter. I believe this makes the third dry winter in a row,” Hopkins said.
The amount of precipitation that fell on Orange in February, Starner said, was just a smidge higher than normal.
“I think we went three-tenths of an inch over the 66-year average,” he said. “But, it wasn’t anything to speak of.”
That February fraction of an inch of moisture might have been enough in another year, but in 2008, following year after year of drought, what would have been more beneficial was enough rain and snow to offset the depleted groundwater levels.
“Our groundwater is the thing to be most worried about,” Starner said. “Our groundwater is not going to get us through a dry period.”
Hopkins had similar concerns about the county’s groundwater levels. “Ground water could be a real concern this summer. We also do not have very good reserves coming out of winter which is a concern,” Hopkins said.
Record well-level lows going back to 2003 have yet to come back up to normal levels, he said. When the water table is filled, moisture measures at least 28 feet below the surface, but as of this week, Starner said moisture in the ground is closer to 35 feet under the surface.
“We’ve been watching it be continually dry, and we haven’t had it come back to where it should be. That’s kind of scary when you’re starting 75 percent down at the beginning of the growing season,” he said. “Being down as far as we are is pretty bad.”
Starner said he can’t predict if the region has finally cycled out of years of drought.
“I’m not a forecaster-I don’t have any idea of what’s going to happen,” he said.
But he can forecast what weather the region would need for a good growing season: Just about a week of dry weather, he said, “to get the crops in the ground,” followed by “about three-quarters of an inch of soaking rain every couple of days.”
Starner hopes for three inches of rain every month through the spring and summer, to prevent the crop and pasture loss growers and consumers suffered through in recent years.
“If we’re going to survive this summer, we just need three inches of rain every month,” he said.
There’s a chance of rain forecasted by meteorologists in coming days. But, Starner said, “not much. We have a chance of a quarter-inch of rain later this week.” But that mere pittance of precipitation, he said, would do little more than dampen the dry, thirsty grasses.
Hopkins, however, was somewhat more optimistic.
“The recent rains have helped the top soil moisture and it looks like we may have an early spring with pastures beginning to green up very nicely for this time of year,” he said.