we just got 2 big thunder showers that dropped nearly 2in. was well recieved.
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Maureen,
My lawn looks like the grass right under your peach trees.
The predicted 0.07” rain yesterday missed us again.
Doing ok in Maryland. At 4.25” for June so far, 1.22” of which fell yesterday.
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Lucky you!
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That’s human nature- when the stock market is booming it feels like it will keep booming, when the skies stop dropping rain for any extended period, it feels like drought will continue.
No one can accurately predict thunder storms in the NE, which sometimes spring up out of nowhere and dumb up to 2 inches in an hour (mulch comes in handy when that happens).
Water trees you want bigger with the equivalent of at least an inch or two of rainwater a week and only deficit irrigate trees whose crops are more important than growth.
As mentioned, soil texture and mulch make a lot of difference, as does soil depth and OM, but you can always wait until trees start to droop a bit on a hot day for your bearing trees. I’m thinking less than the equivalent of a half inch of rain a week.
I’ve been waiting for a drought summer for several years, now we finally have one and the only tree fruit I have are apples.
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We managed to get one of the scattered showers the other day. Only about 1/8 -1/4", so not enough. But it was something. It was looking like another 1/2" today, but that system seems to be passing to the north of us now. It’s bad enough that the roadside weeds are wilting in places. On the plus side, it’s adding stress on the invasives I’m trying to remove, so it makes that job ever so slightly easier.
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I’ve also discovered that while my soil is very sandy and well drained, the soil at my community garden plot a mile away is very water retentive. I had assumed it was the same soil (and it says so on the map, too), but when I actually really investigated it, I noticed it’s more of a clay loam than a sandy loam. On that soil, I can use a lot of techniques so that I barely have to water most of my veggies, even with the drought.
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Historically, in the eastern US, the Southeast and mid-Atlantic are more drought-prone than the Northeast. But the last decade or so, that seems to have flipped.
Since then, it seems at least anecdotally, that New England has had a lot more droughts than the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast have.
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My own yard has huge differences in soil. The clay soil in my front yard can take over a month without a drop of rain (in summer!) before it starts getting dry enough to be of a concern.
The sandy loam in the back can be a little too dry for comfort 4 days after a good soaking if the subsequent weather is sunny and hot, unless well-mulched.
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Usually it takes a hurricane or severe thunderstorm to break a drought. Rain from weak storms will just disappear off the radar map as the moisture is sucked out of the air.
https://nasagrace.unl.edu/ has the current Root Zone Soil Moisture conditions (middle map on the bottom). They also have forecasts, but I’m not sure I would put too much faith in them. Looks like they haven’t updated the forecasts in a while anyhow.
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In Maryland we get humid droughts. We can have weeks on end of disgusting humidity, but storms never manage to form in quantity because the air is too stable.
Yeah, that sometimes happens here too. Fungal and insect pressure can still be high despite the drought.
@galinas,
It is raining right now!!!
I’ve covered my cherries with tarp and hope they won’t crack. 3 weeks of dryness followed by a down pour like this is a recipe for cherry cracking.
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@jcguarneri,
It was a downpour for us but it was over in about 10+ mins. Part of my cherry is wet. Again, I forgot to protect my cherry tree against rainwater on the ground.
I, sometimes, wonder why I do all these when I can go to any supermarket and buy sweet cherries that actually taste better than my home grown.
Am I crazy or what? (It’s rhetorical. Please don’t answer 
)
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10??? I would say 2 min max - but yes, it was a downpour!
There are three NEWA weather stations for Geneva (NY). Their rainfall totals to date for June are 0.47, 0.64, and 0.91. The vagaries of thunderstorms… And the station with the highest total had 0.58 dropped on it in probably 20 minutes a few days ago… We’ll see if this year is most like 2016 (drought throughout), or 2018 (drought followed by rain/humidity causing the worst losses to sour rot ever).
Or maybe it’ll be most like 2020 where we’ll get timely rains resulting in a perfect looking crop followed by an asteroid strike during harvest.
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We got a good 10 mins of down pour. It was good.
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I got 10 min of downpour, followed by 15-20 of moderate rain. The bucket I forgot to put away indicates about 3/8".
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