Labor Day Rain Eases Drought In Woburn Area: Drought Monitor

WOBURN, MA — Heavy rains last week eased drought conditions across much of Massachusetts, the U.S. Drought Monitor said in a drought update on Thursday.

That marked good news for much of Woburn.

Although the extreme drought area shrunk to no longer include the majority of Woburn, the city is still experiencing “severe drought” conditions, according to the Drought Monitor.

A difficult summer with little rainfall has prompted some communities across the state to implement water restrictions as needed.

Woburn has no such restrictions listed through the state’s database of municipal water restrictions. Officials have shared advice on voluntary water conservation, nonetheless, advising measures such as fixing pipe leaks, taking shorter showers and avoiding watering plants during the day when evaporation from the sun is at its highest.

Outside of water conservation advice, residents have heard repeated warnings this summer of increased fire danger due to dry soil and vegetation in area habitats.

That danger manifested recently when roughly 80 acres of the Breakheart Reservation in Saugus burned beginning last month, according to Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) estimates. The fires sent smoke over area communities at times and continued to smolder underground in some places even after the DCR announced a partial reopening of the reservation last week.

It would take several days of rainfall to completely extinguish those hotspots, DCR officials said.

Finally helping pull Woburn out of its extreme drought, rain this past week was a welcome sight for many, bringing massive rainfall to parts of Rhode Island and Connecticut while also dropping steady rain through Central Massachusetts and some areas north of Boston.

One weather spotter report from the National Weather Service on Tuesday measured at least 2.02 inches of rain in Bedford as of 8:51 a.m. Another report documented 2.48 inches inches in Lexington about an hour earlier.

The forecast is now clear through the weekend, with no more rain predicted until Monday, according to Accuweather.