THE CHANGING SEASONS: THINK PiNK 
U.S. Drought Monitor 
July 28, 2009 
Valid 8 a.m. EDT 
B D1 Drought - Moderate 
■ D2 Drought - Severe 
I D3 Drought - Extreme 
■ D4 Drought - Exceptional 
A = Agricultural (crops, pastures, 
grasslands) 
H = Hydrological (water) 
The Drought Monitor focuses on broad-scale conditions. 
Local conditions may vary. See accompanying text summary 
lor forecast statements. 
ySDA 
-v~^ CD® 
http://draught.uiii.edu/dm 
Released Thursday, July 30, 2009 
Author: Mark Svoboda, National Drought Mitigation Center 
Figure 3. As of the end of the summer period, extreme drought conditions persisted in northern Wisconsin, and southern Texas's ex- 
ceptional drought continued. Map courtesy of and © The National Drought Mitigation Center. 
“many geese and other waterfowl found so 
little open ground in the area that they 
starved to death. Nest initiation for most 
birds was late there, and almost complete 
nesting failure followed, due to cold, storms, 
and predation. In the rest of Manitoba and 
much of Saskatchewan, the cold appeared to 
also have a negative impact, as many war- 
blers and other passerines were seen wan- 
dering outside their breeding ranges. Sparse 
foliage, scarcity of food, and cold nights 
combined to reduce breeding success for ear- 
ly nesters.” In the Northern Canada report, 
Eckert notes that, “at Cambridge Bay, the late 
spring, coupled with high water in the small- 
er lakes and ponds, contributed to the loss of 
much edge habitat and thus a reduction in 
nesting opportunities for many species of 
waterfowl, shorebirds, and loons.” A likely 
result of delayed or failed nesting in the far 
North, species such as Pacific Loon, Ross’s 
Gull, Sabine’s Gull, and Long-tailed Jaeger 
were found in the upper Saint Lawrence val- 
ley well into the middle of June, and even in 
Alaska, where North Slope nesters may have 
experienced setbacks, “this summer yielded 
more than the usual wandering or lingering 
non-breeders at sites well south of tradition- 
al breeding areas,” according to Tobish. It is 
not known why certain alcids (e.g., Dovekies 
in western Greenland) failed to breed in 
2009, but food scarcity is likely to blame. 
Black-legged Kittiwake abandoned several 
colonies, among them one on Cape Breton 
Island, Nova Scotia, but this was attributed 
to marauding by Bald Eagles, whose chief 
prey (herring and mackerel) had become 
scarce or departed early. Wandering kitti- 
wakes and Dovekies were reported south of 
breeding grounds in both June and July, the 
latter as far south as New Jersey waters, 
which is most unusual for summer. 
• South of the Canadian border 
For the lower 48 United States, where the 
warming trend is less dramatic, June and July 
were not off the charts: the average tempera- 
ture for June was 69.5° F, or 0.2° F above the 
twentieth-century mean, whereas the average 
July temperature of 73.5° F was 0.8° F below 
the twentieth-century mean. As in Canada, 
there was an east-west split in the 48 states: 
an abnormally strong and persistent upper- 
level pattern kept temperatures remarkably 
low east of the Rockies, while record warmth 
was recorded at locations mostly west of the 
Rockies. 
Continental averages help us to discern cli- 
matic trends, but when we are out in the held, 
we don’t experience weather as an average 
across two months’ time and 24.5 million 
square kilometers. In June, the United States’ 
South, Southeast, and Northwest had temper- 
atures above the average, while the Midwest, 
Northeast, and Southwest had cooler temper- 
atures than usual. Far more unusual was the 
rather cool July: Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Penn- 
sylvania, and West Virginia experienced their 
coolest July ever (in 115 years of records), 
and Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Wiscon- 
sin, and Michigan recorded their second 
coolest July. In the West, the tale was differ- 
ent: Arizona experienced its third warmest 
July, while New Mexico and Washington both 
had the ninth warmest July on record. In 
Death Valley, California, the all-time monthly 
average maximum temperature of 121.3° F 
was set in July: on 22 days there, the mercury 
reached 120° F or higher, which broke the 
standing record of 19 days. New Mexico’s Jan- 
uary-through-July period in 2009 is its fifth 
warmest on record, and the period is Col- 
orado’s eighth warmest. 
On the main, precipitation was unremark- 
able in the contiguous 48 states, being 0.2 
mm above the long-term mean in June and 
4.0 mm above the mean in July. June was wet- 
ter than usual in the Northeast, West, and 
parts of the Southwest but drier in the South. 
July rains were memorable in many areas. As 
in southeastern Canada, the U.S. Northeast 
was soaked, recording its ninth wettest July 
ever. By state, Massachusetts and Rhode Is- 
land had their second wettest Julys, Maine its 
hfth, and Vermont, New Hampshire, and 
Connecticut each recorded its sixth. Above- 
normal precipitation also fell in the Midwest, 
but the Southeast, Southwest, and Plains re- 
gions had drier-than-normal conditions dur- 
ing the month. Based on the U.S. Drought 
Monitor (Figure 3), by the end of July, mod- 
erate-to-exceptional drought covered 14 per- 
cent of the contiguous United States. Drought 
conditions worsened in southern Texas and 
northern Wisconsin. At the end of July, about 
19 percent of the contiguous United States 
had moderate-to-extremely wet conditions, 
mostly areas east of the Plains. The regional 
reports’ introductions provide excellent 
specifics, in most cases, on local meteorologi- 
cal conditions and events. 
East of the Rockies, the effects of the cool, 
wet weather on birds were apparent mostly in 
disruptions of nesting activity. In New Eng- 
land, Wayne Petersen lists Common Loon, 
Osprey, Bald Eagle, American Kestrel, Black 
Skimmer, Common Nighthawk, Purple Mar- 
tin, and Eastern Bluebird among the affected 
species, as well as other cavity nesters and 
ground nesters. In New York, Newjersey, and 
Delaware, rain and onshore winds in June 
“wiped out beach and marsh nests,” accord- 
ing to Bob Paxton, Dick Veit, and Frank 
Rohrbacher. In the Southeast, Ken Blanken- 
ship reports that “marsh- and beach-nesting 
552 
NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS 
