If You Think We Got a Lot More Rain Last July, the Data Says You’re Right

Lawns across Maine are a mix of a little bit of green and a lot more brown. Sprinklers are running to try to wake up those lawns and turn the brown grass green again. There's no doubt about it, we are in a drought in Maine, but it could be worse than it is.

According to Drought.gov, most of Maine is at the moderate drought stage, where irrigation use increases; hay and grain yields are lower than normal, honey production declines and wildfires and ground fires increase.

We all know that we haven't had much rain in July. A passing storm here and there drops some rain, but we really haven't had any good downpours that soak the ground and let the grass retain that water. Over the past few days, my lawn has gotten a little greener, but there's still a lot of brown out there.

News Center Maine's Keith Carson shared a graphic on their Facebook page that shows just what a difference there was between July of 2021 and July of 2022 so far. As of July 19, 2021, Maine saw nearly six inches of rain while on the same day this year, it was just shy of an inch. That's six times as much rain falling last year than this year.

Is there any solid rain in sight? For the next seven days, the most we're going to end up seeing is some scatter showers on Monday. That's it. So July is going to go down as a month with very little rain and a lot of people buying new sprinklers and hoses at the hardware store.