There is a temptation sometimes to think of a drought as being like a no-hitter in baseball.
Remember those? They don’t happen as often in the Major Leagues in this day of analytics-driven roster decisions, where pitchers are sometimes pulled after the sixth inning despite carrying a perfect game. But I digress.
A pitcher has a no-hitter going until an opposing batter gets a base hit on one of his pitches, and then the no-hitter is over.
Similarly, sometimes there is a thought process that a drought goes on so long as there is no significant rain. Then once there is a single significant rainfall, the drought is over.
But that’s not how it works. A single decent rainfall doesn’t end a long-term severe to extreme drought like the one most of Virginia has been in for several months, especially rain that is spotty or streaky in its output, dumping inches on one spot and sprinkles on others.
Drought is more comparable to credit card debt than it is to a baseball no-hitter.
Once a region gets substantially behind on rainfall, it takes more than what would normally be expected — a minimum payment of rainfall — applied repeatedly to significantly reduce the deficit.
Unless there is one huge lump sum payment of rain that would often cause destructive flooding, it’s going to take repeating that extra rainfall over weeks or months over a broad area to get out of the drought.
Recent downpours helpful for some
Some places in Cardinal News’ Southwest and Southside Virginia coverage area have had 4 to 7 inches of rain since the start of July, repeatedly poured on by thunderstorms on multiple days, usually in the afternoon and evening.
My backyard gauge south of Roanoke is one of these spots, getting its fourth rain over an inch on Monday night. The ground in my yard was hard and cracking heading into July. It’s a little muddy in spots now.
But many others in our region have missed the core of the downpours and have gotten much less.
If you’re in a spot that has been poured on day after day, it can seem ridiculous to keep hearing about the severe to extreme drought that continues over most of our region. There isn’t a drought at my house, you might say.
But that’s just the problem. Drought isn’t about what’s happening at your house, or mine.
Drought is never about what happens at a single spot on the map for a short period of time. It is about a wider area over weeks, months, even years, deficits that have built over time and spread over space.
Rivers, reservoirs and underground water tables are filled by rain that falls throughout a geologic watershed.
Heavy rain at one spot and much less at others isn’t entirely without value in easing symptoms of dryness where it does pour, but it doesn’t do nearly as much good to raise water tables or reservoir levels as more moderate rain covering most or all of the watershed.
So, despite fairly frequent periods of showers and storms, Carvins Cove, the southern Botetourt County reservoir that one of the principal sources for water in the Western Virginia Water Authority that serves most of the Roanoke Valley and nearby areas, has slipped 2 feet since the start of July, now 15 ½ feet below full pond.
Smith Mountain Lake has crawled up a few inches but is still about 6 feet below full pond. The lake in Gatewood Park near Pulaski is 20 feet below full pond and only about half full.
These reservoirs don’t have to rise literally to the brim for the drought to be over, but getting a lot closer will be a symptom of an improved precipitation pattern.
A matter of time and space
Even for a single location, there is also a time factor to consider about whether recent heavy rain is enough to overcome long-term deficits.
Blacksburg, for instance, had already had almost 6 inches of rain for the month of July through Tuesday, already well over the 4 ½ inches that is near average for the entire month. But for 2026 to date, Blacksburg was still about 3 inches below normal, and that coming after two consecutive years of being about 6 inches below normal. So in the past 2 ½ years that’s about 15 inches below normal; (before any additional rain on Wednesday).
Rainfall doesn’t have to exactly match normal for it to not be considered a drought. But it can’t run several inches below for multiple years, like many locations in our region have.
The frequent showery and stormy weather can be very good for short-term dryness, soaking the top layer of the soil for a day or two before the sun dries it up or roots soak it up, and it can provide needed moisture to dry and withering plants.
Repeated often enough, showery rain and spotty storms tend to hit most areas with decent rain sooner or later, perhaps enough to lessen the drought for some areas and at least hold the line on the same level of drought for others without it getting much worse.
Much of Southwest Virginia west of Interstate 77 has moved from moderate drought to “abnormally dry” in the most recent U.S. Drought monitor, with a small spot mostly in Scott County now entirely out of the drought, at least for now. Much of Bland and Giles counties along the West Virginia line have scaled back from severe to moderate on the drought monitor.
Perhaps there has been enough rain in some of the New River Valley for an improvement on the new drought monitor map to be issued Thursday, based on data through Tuesday morning.(That will not include additional heavy rain that trained through the area Wednesday.)
But to really get past this drought across the region, we need the widespread soaking rains that give everybody at least an inch or two.
It was flooding here not all that long ago
Widespread general rains are difficult to come by in July and August barring unusual weather patterns or a tropical system. This is more the time of year for weak jet stream flow and convective storms unevenly spaced with varying intensities over short distances.
There is Tropical Storm Bertha now paralleling the Gulf Coast on a westward track, but it doesn’t look likely to affect us directly with widespread rain. The weekend, however, may bring a fairly widespread dose of showers on Saturday, streaming northeastward along a stalled front, but for now it looks like the bulk of it will be to our south over the Carolinas.
The remainder of July looks to have a tendency for cooler temperatures than we saw in the early part of the month and more showery periods. The northwest flow over our region around hot high pressure in the western U.S. may bring that nasty smoke from Canada back at some point, also.
We keep talking about how the El Niño pattern will likely tilt us wetter once we get toward mid-late autumn and winter, though this isn’t an absolute guarantee specific to our region.
A dry hole in the Ohio Valley is common in El Niño winters, and that only has to expand a little east to include us. Occasionally the wet storms of the southern branch of the jet stream common in El Niño get deflected elsewhere by other weather features — curving well northwest of us or suppressed far to the south.
Widespread rain is often more effective at alleviating drought during fall and winter, as it falls through trees bared of their umbrella-like canopy onto a carpet of fallen leaves, draining into streams and reservoirs rather than having a large portion of it soaked up by green vegetation.
The default setting for much of the 21st century to date for our region has not been drought, but flooding. Most of the 2010s and start of the 2020s were wet years for our region, and 2024 gave us some cataclysmic floods with Hurricane Helene’s inland impacts even bracketed by dryness.
Carvins Cove hit its high point of nearly 3 feet above full pond just six years ago, in May 2020.
It is virtually inevitable that we’ll be grousing about never-ending rain and flooding in our region again soon enough, in two years or five or 10, maybe as early as later this year or next spring.
For now, be thankful for the rain your locations gets, patient with the interruptions to summer fun it might cause, and hopeful for better soakers down the road that will refill the reservoirs and keep voluntary water restrictions from becoming mandatory ones.
Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.
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