ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Alexandria remains under a state drought warning as officials reported little relief from a persistent dry spell, even as a sweltering stretch pushed heat index values above 100 and forecasters held out the prospect of scattered storms later this week.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, working with the state Drought Monitoring Task Force, continued the existing drought advisories Thursday, citing a lack of frequent and prolonged rainfall across most of the Commonwealth over the past two weeks.
All of Virginia remains in a drought warning except Isle of Wight County and the cities of Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Virginia Beach in southeast Virginia, which stay under the less severe drought watch.
The update comes a little more than a week after the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments placed Alexandria and the broader region under a separate regional drought watch, urging nearly six million residents across the District, suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia to conserve water voluntarily. That advisory followed a third straight year of dry conditions, record-breaking heat in March and April, and a Potomac River that fell to its lowest level in 130 years of records…