In Lovettsville, Virginia, just over the Potomac River from Frederick County, Maryland, we ticked up to ‘severe drought’ status at the time of sending this off to my hard-working editor, Mike Hillman. (Who is managing thirsty horses as well as newspapers and plants!).

‘Severe’ is better than ‘extreme,’ and not as good as ‘moderate;’ but most of us are just referring to it as the summer we decided to give up and pray for the onset of winter.

And as it’s the election year – possibly The Sweet Meteor of Death too.

High temperatures in the region for weeks have also contributed to many hissy-fits in the garden. If you have friends or relatives who work outside professionally, it may be best to avoid them until you see the first Pumpkin Latte in your Instagram feed.

Curious to see if what I was feeling matched what was actually happening, I got up close and personal this week with the U.S. Drought Portal at www.drought.gov to get some stats on this drought and our historical episodes of drought. The website is managed by NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and is a treasure trove of information and easily accessible stats. It was a fascinating dive – no pun intended.

As a native born Californian, I’ve been snickering over definitions of drought on the East Coast for years; but the fact is, we plant for the conditions we usually have. As they so wisely write on the site "Drought in Maine looks very different than drought in New Mexico."

Making Sense of Terms

Drought is more complicated than ‘Has it rained, and how much?’ That’s meteorological drought, and the number we instinctively look up while surveying our crispy hostas, but a better definition of drought is the imbalance between water supply (precipitation) and water demand (evapotranspiration). On a very basic level, as temperatures increase, so does demand.

In terms of meteorological drought and rainfall, the words ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ are also difficult terms to wrestle with as a layperson. The latter is not only a matter of scientific fact (how many hundredths of an inch we are deviating from mean precipitation, i.e. ‘normal’), but an instant pejorative.

‘Abnormal’ feels frightening and foreboding, even if we realize somewhere in the back of our minds that we are dealing with precipitation averages — and averages need ranges to be calculated in the first place.

The Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) was developed in the early nineties to more accurately quantify that number for various regions over specific time periods using data going back to 1895. This gives us rankings such as "driest (or wettest) on record" or the words "record breaking" — which are eagerly pounced upon by news platforms looking for stories to keep us up at night, but it is not without its weaknesses as it is a indexed measurement of precipitation only.

Swimming Through Statistics

You can break a record by one one-hundredths of an inch that stretches back to records set 100 years ago – or merely 5. Which is not to downplay how valuable these data are, but to help us accurately and calmly navigate them.

For instance, June was our driest June in the state of Virginia since precipitation was first recorded in 1895. Conversely, May only ranked 105th driest in the same 129 years. The driest May happened in 1911. The driest April in 1942. And in the period between January and our driest June ever, the state of Virginia is actually up in measurable rainfall by seven tenths of an inch.

That doesn’t make us feel better about our hostas of course, because it’s also not the whole story.

What these data can’t show you is all the other variables such as "rainfall, streamflow, groundwater levels, regional climate, soil moisture, water storage in reservoirs, ecological conditions, municipal water restrictions, and the time of year" (according to NIDIS). These are evaluated on a weekly basis to come up with the US Drought Monitor Map.

That’s an incredibly handy tool to more accurately assess what we’re dealing with; but sadly, that number crunching only goes back 24 years to 2000 when scientists got together and began to gather the same data in the same way across agreed upon geographical points.

Patterns of Drought Encourage Adaptable Plants – And Gardeners

Beyond statistics (which you can very quickly find yourself clicking through for hours) I very much appreciate the neutral but specific language that much of this site employs.

"Drought is a normal climate pattern that has occurred in varying degrees of length, severity, and size throughout history." says the NIDIS, and boy they’re not kidding. Examining the handily graphed SPI data for Virginia going back to 1895, it looks as if our major issues of precipitation often have more to do with too much rain than too little.

Regardless, it was a very good dive, and I heartily recommend you have a look for your state. You can view 24 years of the Drought Monitor Map, or 129 of the SPI. Or you can even look at Paleoclimate data reconstructed from tree ring studies.

I did not come away feeling happy about crispy hostas and crispier tempers, but more capable of putting it all into historical perspective. That energizes me to be adaptable and plant for new patterns, rather than give up the ghost and shake my fist at the sky.

I’ll save that for the election.