This is the week when southern Connecticut’s drought ended.
If there is an “official” time when the drought ended in Fairfield and New Haven counties it was 8:30 a.m. Thursday, May 11, 2017 when U.S. Drought Monitor released its weekly report.
It was the first time in more than a year that Fairfield and New Haven counties has no serious water worries Now, more than 75 percent of Connecticut now has no drought conditions.
Last October, Gov.
Dannel P. Malloy ordered the drought watch after three years of below normal rainfall.
The end of the drought watch came after several months of beneficial rainfall.
This week, Aquarion also started to remove a temporary pipeline that was pumping millions of gallons of water a day from Bridgeport to points the Stamford/Greenwich area.
More than 2 inches of rain was measured last weekend at the city’s Laurel and North Stamford reservoirs, according to Peter Fazekas, a spokesman for Aquarion Water Co. Stamford reservoir levels rose to 90.5 percent on Tuesday, up from 87 percent on April 11.
ClimateCentral.com reports that after years of intense, record-setting drought across the U.S., particularly in the Great Plains and California, the country is now experiencing its lowest level of drought in the 17 years since the U.S. Drought Monitor began its weekly updates.
Less than 5 percent of the U.S. was in some stage of drought as of May 4, compared to the 65 percent in September 2012.