West Virginia Drought Reaches New Level; Governor Justice Responds

we'll have those headlines in just a moment but first let's start off our show tonight with our chief neologist Chad Mell who is standing by in County with more about our ongoing drought Chad this is the result of the 11th driest and the 14th hottest summer on record the New River is literally drying up but that's not the only River and Creek and Stream in the region suffering from the drought The Greenbrier River is at a record low and many of the creeks and streams in West Virginia are suffering from the same problem the drought monitor updated on th and probably not to your surprise if you look at your lawn and you look across the region the moderate to severe to extreme drought has expanded across the entire State for the first time since the drought monitor has been in existence the last 22 years we have a level four drought and that is west of Sutton the entire state is seeing very poor to poor soil conditions and 92% of the pastures are in very bad shape now let's look forward to sep here are the historical rain Trends since 1963 we've had 18 septembers with above average rain but 38 years with below average rain so obviously drought is on our side going forward through September and we look at the Historical start to the fall dry season the 1 inch or more of rainfall in one day is most likely to happen prior to September 15th usually after we get past September 15th we don't see that much rain for the 3 years with 1 in in October this is 1 in in just one day not total for the month September was dry and L was common with dry septembers now you can look around you and see the colors on the leaves changing so how is Mother Nature how are these trees dealing with the drought stress because the water table is so low these trees are going into drought stress mode so the tree is still tapping into water but it's conserving it and it's conserving it by not letting it distribute to all the branches so that's why these leaves are changing color prematurely and will eventually fall off that's why the Fall Foliage season is going to be abbreviated and much earlier this season leading to an enhanced Wildfire risk as early as late August into the first part of September this drought is not going anywhere anytime soon and we will continue to follow the trends and bring you the latest each week chief meteorologist Chad Marill for Newswatch now I'll bring Chad back in in just one moment first I want to go to what governor what the governor had to say and Governor Justice today telling reporters that the state is continuing to face catastrophic drought he already extended the state of emergency and now the US small business administration has activated its disaster Loan program for farmers in 20 counties including fet Raleigh and Nicholas counties in our viewing area the governor said that the state is doing everything it can to help farmers we trying to help every way we possibly can you know there'll be federal federal assistance and we're trying to help on the state level so uh you know all I've got to say is thank you for all you do all the hard work you do every day and uh you know I pray you know I pray that the the blessings of rain will come from the good Lord and uh you know for some reason right now they just haven't come and so so we'll uh we'll keep keep our heads down and keep working now let's turn our attention back in studio to our chief neologist Chad M Chad we saw some really heavy rain this afternoon did it have any effect on the drought well I think it will keep it from getting any worse but there are levels with the progressive drought you go from voluntary water restrictions to mandatory water restrictions and that's what we potentially could face in the fall now here's the drought monitor as of just now now keep in mind that we had the level four drought that's the highest category and in West Virginia ranks as the second amount of real estate in the entire country with that level four drought Texas is first Montana's third and Ohio is fourth