Three years ago I first learned of the concept of a “flash drought,” the dry flip side of a flash flood. As I wrote at the time, the term ” sounds like an oxymoron since ‘drought’ usually reflects accumulated dryness rather than a quick-hit event. But as we saw last summer and fall, it doesn’t take long to go from not-bad to very-bad even in usually damp New England.”
We’re in the midst of another one, with brush fires breaking out all over – seven in New Hampshire in the last day and a half, by my count.
As the Northeast Integrated Drought Information System notes, these events are “the rapid onset of intense dry periods that can follow a period of normal to above-normal precipitation.” That’s certainly the case here: It has been wetter than normal for well over a year.
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