A little over a week ago, Virginians were holding out for some rain. Almost the entire state was experiencing severe drought, according to the US Drought Monitor.
The rain finally came in late May. A week of dreary weather dropped varying amounts of precipitation across the commonwealth in light drizzle and occasionally steady rain — capped off by a torrential downpour Wednesday.
Andrew Noyes, a water supply planner at the state Department of Environmental Quality, said the rain was much needed. But it hasn't set things back to a baseline.
"It certainly doesn't kind of have a windshield wiper effect, where it just wipes away all of the drought statuses and deficits. It does not do that, but it does help," Noyes said.
DEQ's Office of Water Supply tracks a range of indicators that help the general public understand how much water is available and where — including precipitation, reservoir levels, stream flow and soil moisture.
The office evaluates the state in 13 regions, mostly split up by river watersheds.
By mid-May, OWS had placed 12 of those regions under a drought warning — Southeast Virginia was on a slightly-less-serious drought watch.
And the US Drought Monitor (a joint project of multiple federal agencies and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln) classified roughly half of the state as experiencing "extreme drought."
Noyes said that's due to a long stretch of dry weather. From October 2025 to April 2026, much of the state experienced a 10-inch precipitation deficit compared to average levels, the second biggest deficit on record since recordkeeping began in the early 1890s.
That's too much for a few inches of rain over one week to fix — especially when a big chunk of that rain came in Wednesday's downpour. Incidentally, that's exactly the type of rainfall that is expected to become more common as greenhouse gas-driven global climate change has increasing effects on Virginia's weather patterns.
"It's still very much to be determined, with upcoming weather patterns, if we start trending towards looking at that possibility of an emergency declaration again," Noyes said.
After drought watches and warnings come emergencies, which can entail mandatory water usage restrictions. Any such declaration would have to be approved by Gov. Abigail Spanberger.
Noyes said it will take time for the recent rain to show up in most of the indicators he tracks, and noted that reservoir levels — other than Smith Mountain Lake — have not trended very low. Stream gauges and upper soil moisture levels have gone up considerably. Those are good signs, but not strong indicators on their own that the drought has been significantly reduced.
Still, he said, it's good practice for all Virginians to watch their water use. That could mean taking shorter showers, putting off that car wash, fixing leaky pipes and reducing lawn watering — especially in the hottest times of the day, when more is lost to evaporation.
"It's the cliche, but 'every drop counts' is a good motto," Noyes said.
Agricultural producers across the state have felt the effects, according to Stephen Barts, an agent at the Pittsylvania County Cooperative Extension.
"The soil moisture conditions had gotten to a point where it was just not conducive to really any commodity crop," Barts said, specifically referencing corn, soybean and tobacco.
He said the rain changed that — many growers planted crops in the days before the rain came.
That doesn't mean longer-term impacts won't be felt, though. A later start to the planting season will also delay harvesting.
And the window for some crops — like forage crops for livestock — has more or less passed by at this point.
Barts said that's usually not a huge deal. In another year, some parts of the state may be experiencing drought, but there would be producers not far down the road who have additional hay and other forage they're looking to sell to livestock producers in need.
"This year, really from us to my colleagues in Georgia and Florida — the Southeast — is in a very similar set of circumstances," Barts said. "That pool of hay that we may be able to draw from other regions is negatively impacted in a very similar way to what we are."
The outcome of that remains to be seen, though Barts said cattle production costs will go up as a result of limited food supply and longer shipping distances, which compound with high fuel prices.
Barts said that Virginia's farmers have had to deal with a "story of extremes" in recent years, leading to new risk management practices that will hopefully reduce the overall impacts of this drought.
But real relief might not come for months, depending on the weather this summer. A strong El Niño is forecasted this year — that could bring a rainy fall and winter.
The majority of Virginia is still in a severe drought, according to the US Drought Monitor. And the state Drought Monitoring Task Force maintained its existing drought watch and warning advisories, despite the above-average rainfall over the past two weeks.
Agricultural producers in dozens of Virginia counties are eligible to apply for federal assistance, due to a US Department of Agriculture drought disaster declaration.
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