The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in coordination with the Virginia Drought Monitoring Task Force has lifted its drought warning advisory for several southeast counties including Greensville, Brunswick and Southampton.
In some instances it has expanded the drought warning advisory to include 60 counties and maintained the advisory for 32 counties and cities.
Several factors have contributed to the lifting of advisories, maintenance of drought watch advisories and the expansion of warning advisories in the affected regions, VDEQ said in an update this morning.
https://rrspin.com/news/9218-va-deq-lifts-drought-advisory-warning-for-se-part-of-state.html#sigProIda97ed85bf6
Precipitation over the past seven to 14-day period showed localized heavy rainfall — 1.5 to 4 inches along the southeastern portion of the state resulted in improvements in soil moisture, stream flow, and groundwater levels.
Conversely, precipitation over the central and western part of the Commonwealth has been sparse leading to exceptional dryness within large portions of the Shenandoah, Upper James, New River, Roanoke, and Big Sandy drought evaluation regions.
Stream flows are currently below the 25th percentile of normal values for seven of the 13 drought evaluation regions with three of these regions currently below the 5th percentile — Big Sandy, Roanoke River, and Shenandoah.
Groundwater levels for monitoring wells in the Climate Response Network have shown continued declines within the central and western portion of the Commonwealth with nine regions currently below the 25th percentile. Of these, groundwater levels within six drought monitoring regions are currently below the 5th percentile including the Big Sandy, New River, Upper James, Shenandoah, Northern Virginia, and York-James.
