A drier Maine summer goes out with a parched September

You are not imagining it: This summer was much drier in Maine compared with last year.

And the past three weeks have been especially parched. Many locations throughout the state have received less than a quarter inch of rain so far this month, or roughly 2 inches less than their norms for September, according to the National Weather Service.

Mal Walker, lead meteorologist for the weather service in Caribou, said that an atmospheric high pressure system along the East Coast has recently been preventing tropical moisture in the Caribbean from making its way north over land. Normally, September brings such moisture to New England in the form of rain, he said.

“This year we’ve had none,” Walker said. “It’s a far different situation for September than it was a year ago.”

The summer of 2024, which technically draws to a close Sunday with the autumnal equinox, has been drier by several inches of rain in multiple places throughout the state than it was in 2023, which Walker said was an “exceptionally wet” year.

The quick swing between those extremes — very wet followed by very dry — is yet another example of how human-caused climate change is affecting the state’s weather patterns.

Bangor received nearly 4 inches less of rain from May through August than it did during the same period last year, according to National Weather Service data. Caribou got an inch and a half less rain, and Millinocket got nearly 6 inches less.

The difference is even more stark along the coast, which is considered abnormally dry, according to Drought.gov .

The municipalities of Portland, Surry, Robbinston, Rockport and Wiscasset each got at least half a foot less rainfall for the same four months this summer than in 2023. Though not a coastal city, Augusta received nearly 12 inches less.

Yes, 2023 brought more rain than usual to Maine . It came after several dry years and brought the most rain that many places had received since at least 2019.

That contrast over the past few summers illustrates a growing pattern of swings between deluge and drought, which experts say is related to climate change .

For this month, a few Maine locales got rain on Sept. 1, but since then there’s been little use for umbrellas. At Portland International Jetport, where the norm is 2.26 inches of rain for the month, there has been only 0.01 inch in the past three weeks. Bangor, where the norm for September is 2.28 inches, has gotten 0.19 of an inch so far.

Limited precipitation can contribute to the threat of wildfires, and while Maine consistently faces less of that risk than more arid regions in the West, the recent dry spell has increased the chance of a blaze growing out of control.

Much of the state faces a moderate wildfire threat, according to the Maine Forest Service . The threat extends east from the western mountains across the geographic middle of the state north of Bangor to most of eastern Maine, from MDI in Hancock County to Van Buren in northeastern Aroostook County.

Walker said that, on the whole, 2024 has not been unusually dry in Maine, despite the lack of rainfall in recent weeks. March of this year was exceptionally wet , helping to boost 2024’s year-to-date totals higher than they were in 2020 or 2021.

“The wildfire threat has been low until this month,” Walker said. “Once we get past next week, there’s a chance of seeing some rainfall.”