“Chance of showers” is one of the most familiar refrains of late summer, echoing every morning from our TVs and radios. But the number of showers actually hitting our area—and, most importantly, filling our reservoirs—has been next to nothing in the past month, leaving our area vulnerable to a third consecutive year of drought restrictions. Reservoir levels have dropped to 83.7 percent of usable capacity from 97.5 percent of capacity at the end of June.
“In June and early July, we were getting a fairly frequent amount of thunderstorm activity,” says Tom Frederick, executive director of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA). “The end of July, that ceased and we’re going on about a month now of very dry weather. We’ve seen stream flows drop dramatically.”
At the end of August last year, reservoir levels were at 91.6 percent—and we were in the midst of mandatory restrictions and the worst drought since 2002. Demand is still running relatively high, at just under 11 million gallons a day.
Frederick says that RWSA will probably run its predictive model on Thursday and that an announcement updating the drought status will come on Friday.
Ragged Mountain Reservoir is now down 3.7 feet.