All of North Carolina west of the I-95 corridor is, with a couple small exceptions, either abnormally dry or in a moderate drought. People who lived through the drought of 2007 begin to worry when there are yellow and brown colors on the weekly state drought map, especially as climate change is increasing our temperatures.
Wake County is exceptionally dry but a significant swath that includes Charlotte, Statesville, Winston-Salem and Greensboro in a moderate drought. A drought’s intensity is classified from moderate through severe, extreme and exceptional. In 2007 Wake County and much of the state was in an exceptional drought.
The drought began in late 2006 and continued to deepen in 2007. By the end of August 2007 Raleigh had imposed stringent water use rules which limited outdoor watering to one day a week for sprinkler/irrigation systems, two days a week for hand watering; vehicles could only be washed on weekends; pressure washing was also limited to weekends; and pools could only be filled to maintain sanitary conditions. In October Wake Forest Fire Department Chief Jerry Swift worried that there would not be enough water to fight a serious fire in a large house, which would take 1,000 gallons of water a minute.
County residents watched as Falls Lake, the only water supply for Raleigh, Wake Forest, Rolesville, Garner, Knightdale, Wendell and Zebulon, fell to an all-time low on Christmas Day, 241.52 above mean sea level (the normal water level is 251.5), and there were acres of mud flats in the lake’s upper reaches.
The week of Dec. 13, 2007, there were only 90 days of water left in the lake and Raleigh officials were seriously considering imposing Stage 2 water restrictions. Those restrictions, which included banning flushing and sterilizing of new water connections, could have brought building to a screeching halt. They would also have banned power washing, hand watering of lawns and gardens and washing vehicles at home.
Providential rains in late December and early January finally broke the drought. Falls Lake had risen more than a foot by Jan. 3, 2008, and continued to rise. The state Division of Forest Resources, which had imposed a ban on open burning in all 100 counties since summer, lifted the ban on Jan. 2 because of the rain.
Rain continued to fall through the winter, and by spring the drought and the water restrictions were just a dark memory. The experience, however, spurred Raleigh to quickly provide the second water treatment plant and water source on Lake Benson and to restructure its water rates to gently encourage conservation.
You can see for yourself the status of dryness and drought across the state at the Drought Monitoring site, http://www.ncwater.org/Drought_Monitoring/, updated every Tuesday by staff at the Division of Water Resources in the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The site also has links to other sites related to water in North Carolina.
Another site maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can keep you up to date about stream flow into Falls Lake and its level: http://epec.saw.usace.army.mil/dssfalls.txt.
