But while all droughts require dry conditions, this one is different.
We spoke with three drought experts to ask them how this late-fall drought is impacting New England, what residents need to know and to share their insights on what we can expect. Benjamin Cook is a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies who investigates drought from 1,000 years ago through the end of the 21st century. Neil Pederson is a forest ecologist at Harvard Forest and has studied the climate impact on trees over decades and centuries. David Boutt is a professor at UMass Amhert's College of Natural Sciences. His research focuses on the subsurface part of the hydrologic cycle.
Q: How serious is this drought?
A: Benjamin Cook: When droughts get severe, like this one, there are reasons to be concerned and there are proactive measures we can take. This is a hazard that we aren't used to typically dealing with in the eastern United States. When we think about drought, a lot of times we are thinking about the western US. The way the climate is in the west, you can get into these situations where droughts can last for at least several months, if not longer. A lot of that has to do with the seasonality of the precipitation. In the eastern US, precipitation is about the same every month. (This means some areas have dry seasons. Droughts can worsen in these areas quickly, especially if the climatologically "wet" season is dry.) There is potential that this could continue into the spring, but there is probably as even of a chance that we will have a really wet winter and all the drought will be wiped out and this will be a distant memory.
Neil Pederson: We know that hot droughts are more damaging to trees than cool droughts. The 1960s drought, which is one of the more severe droughts in the last 500 years, was actually a cool period. If we went five to six years but it was warmer, I think we would see more mortality than we saw in the 1960s.
The 2016 drought, which was severe and followed the late 2015 drought, the only trees that died were already likely stressed by another disease. Our work in the eastern United States found that you need at least two or more years of really significant reductions in water before trees start dying. If this continues into 2026, then things will change, we will see an uptick in mortality.
Q: What is causing this dry pattern?
A: Globe Weather Team: A persistent pattern of high pressure has kept the rain away, or at the very least has helped break down storms as they near New England -- infusing dry air into low-pressure systems to reduce the amount of rainfall over our region. Essentially, the jet stream, or the train tracks for our weather, is sluggish and/or blocked. There is an old saying that "drought begets drought." Think of it as a feedback cycle. A feedback cycle in weather is a process where an initial change, like warming, triggers effects that either amplify (positive feedback) or dampen (negative feedback) the original change, influencing weather patterns and climate stability. When you get stuck in one of these patterns, it is tough to dig yourself out of it.
Q: Why is this drought unique?
A: Benjamin Cook: Across much of the eastern United States, we have been in a long-term wetting trend since the middle of the 20th century and a lot of that has been driven by increased precipitation during the fall. I think on some level, those are the recent expectations for what the weather is supposed to be like in the fall. The fact that now we are experiencing one of these pretty significant droughts, which is a rare event, now it stands out as quite exceptional.
Neil Pederson: Such a dry period will limit the amount of below-ground growth that is happening (the roots). Some trees in the Northeast, when they form buds in the fall, what they are actually doing is setting how much they are going to grow in the next year in terms of branch elongation and sometimes how many leaves are produced. We have evidence that late season droughts will impact growth the following year.
Q: What effect is the drought having on groundwater?
A: David Boutt: Groundwater systems are slow to respond to drought. We have documented that the lag between a precipitation deficit (drought) and groundwater response can take months to even a year here in New England. The timing of when the drought happens (spring, summer, fall, etc.) makes a difference in the response time. What we are seeing now is that the water table (groundwater storage) is falling at a time where it should be beginning to rise and recover. The natural seasonal recovery of the water table will be delayed into the late winter and spring and may result in a persistent groundwater drought into the summer.
A: David Boutt: It's tricky to say, but water systems dependent on flow measurements in streams (for example, Ipswich and Northampton) will be most susceptible to this drought. The deficit in soil moisture that has built up over the last two to three months will be obscured by the change in seasons and will perhaps impact water level in small reservoirs and over the long term, impact our non-MWRA (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority) water supplies.
Q: What role does climate change play in these droughts?
A: Benjamin Cook: There are clear signals in the thermodynamic effects of climate on drought. We know a warmer atmosphere is a thirstier atmosphere and is going to suck more moisture out of the surface. In context of the extreme warmth we are seeing right now, there probably is a climate change signal with this drought. These warmer temperatures are probably exacerbating the drought. A definitive answer will have to wait until a (drought) event reanalysis.
Q: Is there any wet weather on the horizon?
A: Globe Weather Team: Prospects for rain in the short term are low. In the long term, we are expecting a weak La Niña, which typically leads to drier than average conditions during the winter in New England. There are local effects on weather patterns that can help us buck the trend, but we won't know that until winter.
During a La Niña, the jet stream shifts northward across the eastern Pacific Ocean. This causes a ripple effect and over the eastern U.S., the jet stream then dips south in response.