Latest on Maine drought conditions

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Everybody, standing out here on this gorgeous Tuesday morning after a pretty wet and unsettled Memorial Day weekend.

[00:00:06]One of several soaking rain events we've seen this month. You may be wondering what that's done for the drought that we've been seeing across the state since around this point last year. Well, it certainly was very helpful. May now running above normal in much of the state. In fact, for Portland, well over 2 in above normal for rainfall so far in the month of May.

[00:00:26]Takes a while though to break out of a long-term drought. In fact, of the past 12 months, 10 have had below normal precipitation. And this has really lowered groundwater levels. Here's a plot of groundwater levels in Sanford.

[00:00:41]You can see normally where we're typically we'd want them to be around the little triangle you see there.

[00:00:47]That's the median groundwater level.

[00:00:49]Where it's actually been is that red line. So, it's been much lower than average in the past year. Same story in Oxford as you can see on that graph here as well. So, it'll take a while to replenish this groundwater. We're going to need a few weeks or even a few months of above normal rainfall to truly turn this drought around.