Lorton Precipitation Amounts Mar 11 - 17, 2013; Drought Over

Winter’s finally over!  On the calendar, anyway. Spring starts Wednesday.  So with spring comes the beginning of the growing season - gardening, landscaping, maybe even agriculture.  The story last year was drought.  Typically the water level is at its minimum in October, and hydrologists divide the calendar into water years beginning on October first, the idea being we start with a minimum, builds up over the winter, and dissipates during the summer, returning to its minimum level in the fall.  We can assess our readiness for planting by looking at how much precipitation we’ve received over the winter (since October 1) as well as the groundwater levels and soil moisture generally.  

Since 10/1/12 my rain gauge has recorded 19.16” of rain.  That’s 1.57” above normal, so the good news is we have not had a dry winter and actually made up some ground on restoring water levels from the drought. A map showing the departure from normal precipitation for the water year shows northern Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware receiving more precipitation than normal, and areas west of the Blue Ridge receiving less, but conditions across Virginia improved last week such that no portion of the state was considered suffering from a drought or even was abnormally dry.  

For planting, soil temperatures are important too and were only in the upper 30s or near 40 degrees on the last report available March 3-9.

My rain gauge in Lorton recorded the following precipitation at 6am on the day indicated for the previous 24 hours.