RICHMOND, Va. — Recent rainfall has brought a glimmer of relief to the Richmond area and Tri-Cities, but Virginia’s historic drought has reached emergency status in the Roanoke region — and Gov. Abigail Spanberger is warning that a drought emergency executive order remains on the table if conditions do not improve.
“As governor, I do not want to put an executive order in place. I do not want us to need mandatory practices to conserve water,” Spanberger said Thursday at a news conference held at Smith Mountain Lake. “But we are constantly in that reevaluation phase of when do we hit true, true emergency where we do need to take that extra step.”
The latest U.S. Drought Monitor, released Thursday and based on conditions through Tuesday morning, shows meaningful improvement across multiple drought categories statewide. Extreme drought has dropped from 26% to 17% — a decrease of nearly 10 percentage points. Severe drought has fallen 7 points to 33%, and moderate drought dropped 7 points to 35%. Areas near Richmond down to the Tri-Cities are no longer in drought status, having been downgraded to the abnormally dry category.
However, the improvement does not tell the full story. All areas of the commonwealth continue to experience historic drought conditions. Statewide rainfall is approximately 7.8 inches below normal for the water year — making this the second driest water year on record. The Roanoke region has received only 57% of its normal rainfall…