The entire state of NJ is currently in a drought. My part of the state is officially in a severe drought. In my immediate area, we’ve only had about 3-3.5” of rain since the start of July. We should be getting 3.5-4.5” per month so this puts us at least a foot down from normal. While nearby areas got hit with thunderstorms this summer, they narrowly steered clear of us. Last fall, I started putting bins of short cutoffs and nuggets out at the road at moms where I process all of my wood and did decent enough with it. September had weekly sales around $250. People buying this are campers and backyard fire pit users. Today makes day 27 in a row without measurable which is 2 days shy of the all time record from 1874. The state has put in a ban that prohibits all outdoor fires so sales haven’t just slowed down but have completely stopped. Just for some perspective, this picture is in a wet area in the woods just a couple miles away. There is usually water from tree line to tree line and it should be 5-6 feet deep in the center. Picture is from 2 weeks ago.
It's crazy how dry it is Joe. I was talking to bobby last week about how they're running the irrigation pumps in order to flood the bogs. Never in my life have I seen them do that.
There is at least one reservoir we see on the route to Gardner MA, and that sucker is as low as Ive seen it. To Mike's point, brush fires and wildfires are becoming a thing around here. I have a load of pallets and the like to burn, but need to wait some. Some fire chief in Hartford suggested people not use their fireplaces.....so my neighbor didnt want to light off her wood stove last night. Sca
It’s drier than normal up here in Maine as well. Had the mini excavator out yesterday piling stumps in the stump dump, and the amount of dust was nuts. It would make a dust cloud just tracking back and forth, you would have thought it was mid August. I dug up 4 big pine stumps and they just flopped out of the ground with little dirt around the root ball.
As I was doing some wood processing yesterday I got to thinking about how dry it is around here. I haven’t lit a fire in the stove yet this year as I usually try to hold off until Halloween. But it is so dry here I think I’ll wait until things change weather wise. A couple years back I almost lost my garage and who knows what else might have went if it would have at my rental house. Fire department figured it was a spark out of the neighbors wood stove
Last Friday overnight we had around .60” of rain. That’s the only measurable precipitation since back in July. Fire restrictions are in place everywhere, and grass fires are popping up. I’m sure my bundle sales are affected, but being my first year I have nothing to compare to
Same here more or less. Brush fire in central CT made the national news. Burn ban started a couple days ago. I'm liking it as storage is dry and making firewood that's not all wet is a pleasure. Im also able to access a part of storage I haven't been able to due to high water table. Very muddy there. Have several cords to get out including BL. Have a half cord from there going out tomorrow.
And I mowed my dust today. The grass is still there, but there was more dust in the air than grass bits and clippings.
I haven't bothered to be in a hurry to put out my roadside stand. We've been under burn bans for a while now. November rain will fix that.
It's been super dry in Indiana as well. Sales have been way down since the week of 7/22 and just picked up this month, simply because it's cooled down. I actually had 2 weeks with less than $100 in sales. That never happens during the summer. We still have a burn ban in place. We may see a little rain on Thursday.
Yes the Pine Barrens are a little gem within the south central part of the state. A lot of undeveloped land including plenty of woods and farms smack dab in the middle of the NY/Philly metropolitan area.
This has been an awful year for my lawn care business. The lawns that arent irrigated were brown by mid-June (a month earlier than usual). We got some rain early July and that's pretty much been it with the exception of some rain about a month ago.
