Severe drought declared in Essex County as Lake Champlain water level drops

Champlain’s shorelines resemble ‘alien landscape’ as low water levels seen across Adirondack region

By Mike Lynch

Julie Silverman, the Lake Champlain Lakekeeper, spent 20 years watching the daily nuances of Lake Champlain water levels while working at the ECHO Center on Burlington’s waterfront. She still visits the lake nearly every day.

She said this week she has never seen the lake like this. Shallow bays are turning into mudflats, boat launches are unusable and little-seen rock formations are emerging on the water’s surface. Silverman said she spent time cleaning trash from the lake bottom in a bay typically covered in water. “It’s an alien landscape in a lot of these bays,” Silverman said.

Lake Placid resident Art Lussi has similar observations on the New York side. He regularly visits Lake Champlain in the summer months to kite surf at Ausable Point in Peru and near Plattsburgh. 

“In my 25 years of kiting and windsurfing, it hasn’t been this low,” he said. “It approaches this level sometimes in late September but never in August.” 

USGS gauges recorded Lake Champlain water levels at Port Henry at 93.28 feet on Thursday and 93.45 on Friday after a rainfall.  The record low there of 92.09 feet was recorded in December 1908.

“It’s very low. It’s not down to the level of a record or all time low, but it’s below average for what we typically see, especially this time of year,” said Jessica Storm, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Burlington.

On Thursday, the Nature Weather Service announced that parts of Essex County had reached severe drought status, joining several counties in Vermont, most of New Hampshire and all of southern Maine. Severe is the third most serious draught status on the U.S. Drought Monitor on a scale that includes five levels. 

On Friday, the New York Mesonet precipitation maps showed the town of Essex received only 4.38 inches of rain in the past 90 days while Ticonderoga got 4.69 inches. By comparison, the map shows interior Adirondack sites, including Tupper Lake and Saranac Lake, receiving between roughly 7 to 10 inches. 

In August, Essex received just under an inch of rain, about three inches less than normal. 

But it isn’t just Essex County and Lake Champlain that is dry. NWS has declared four other Adirondack counties — St. Lawrence, Franklin, Clinton and Essex — to be partially or fully in moderate drought stage while most of Franklin, southern St. Lawrence, and sections of Clinton were considered abnormally dry. USGS river gauges throughout the region have recorded water flows on some Adirondack rivers at some of their lowest levels in 25 years, with others at levels only seen every few years.

Scott McKim, science manager with Atmospheric Sciences Research Center at Whiteface Mountain Field Station, said weather stations in Gabriels and Whiteface have received less rain than normal for the year overall, particularly in August. 

“We’re roughly six inches below normal from the calendar year,” McKim said. “But that doesn’t paint the full picture, because we inherited a bit of a deficit going back last fall and winter.”

Willsboro Supervisor Shaun Gillilland, chair of the Essex County Board of Supervisors, has a farm on the Boquet River and has noticed the drought on his property.

“We’ve had dry years, but the effects have not been as drastic, I think, as they are now,” he said. “Many of the crop farmers with corn and (vegetables) are suffering because it’s gotten so dry.”

The dry weather caused Essex County to issue a burn ban several weeks ago that extends through at least Sept. 11 and several towns, including Willsboro, have issued bans on daytime, outdoor water use due to the drought. The state Department of Environmental Conservation’s fire danger map had shown a high fire risk level in the Adirondacks earlier this week but dropped that down to moderate Friday after a storm dropped an inch of rain. 

“The use of water doesn’t enter people’s heads up here normally because we are blessed with such a tremendous amount of water,” Gillilland said. “But this year that’s different. These kinds of things have to be in people’s consciousness, because the climate is changing and the extremes are getting worse.”

Although the region did receive some rainfall late this week, next week’s forecast is once again very dry showing no rain events. As a result, the drought is expected to continue. 

“It’s going to take kind of multiple, multiple rounds of some good rainfall and potentially, if necessary, snowfall into the winter months,” Storm said. 

Zachary Matson contributed to this report.