More rain needed for Chicago suburbs to escape severe drought

Despite recent scattered rainstorms in some Chicago suburbs, severe drought continues to have a hold on much of the state after an extremely dry three months.

This year’s April, May and June were some of the region’s driest on record, and it will take several weeks of consistent rain for gardens, streams and crops to find relief, experts say.

While the several inches of rain that doused the area in the last days of June helped slightly, most of that water ended up running into stormwater drainage systems rather than soaking into the ground.

“With flooding, we’re losing a significant proportion of that rain that we’re getting to runoff,” state climatologist Trent Ford said. “The runoff goes into our streams and then out into rivers out in Illinois, gone. It’s not really helping us from an agricultural standpoint, from an ecology standpoint, from my standpoint. The streams go up, and then they come right back down because base flow is really low. So it’s good, but it’s not enough.”

In the face of large rainstorms, resources like rain barrels and rain gardens can reduce the surge of stormwater runoff while storing water for gardens, plants and flowers, Ford said.

“If we don’t have those systems in place, then we lose that runoff,” he said.

“In this stressful time for trees and plants, it’s important to understand and provide the special care they need. Wilting leaves are a sign of drought stress, but it’s better to keep plants supplied with enough water before they get stressed enough to wilt.”

—  Spencer Campbell, the Arboretum’s Plant Clinic manager

Looking ahead, forecasts are fairly optimistic for wetter conditions, “but it’s really up to the atmosphere if that forecast comes to fruition,” Ford said.

To help keep plants healthy through the dry spell, experts at The Morton Arboretum recommended homeowners water trees and other plants more often than usual to prevent drought stress.

“In this stressful time for trees and plants, it’s important to understand and provide the special care they need,” Spencer Campbell, the Arboretum’s Plant Clinic manager, said in a statement. “Wilting leaves are a sign of drought stress, but it’s better to keep plants supplied with enough water before they get stressed enough to wilt.”

When soil water is limited, young roots on many trees are weakened or killed, reducing the plant’s ability to absorb water.

If landscape plants don’t receive enough rainfall or supplemental watering, damage to foliage, loss of foliage and even the death of the plant is likely.

While larger, established trees have wide root systems and don’t need to be watered as frequently, trees and shrubs need at least once inch of water through a long, slow soak every week to 10 days to cope with lack of rain, Campbell said.

Certain plants like containers, vegetable gardens and newly planted perennials may need extra care, with watering every couple of days in particularly hot weather. Letting the top few inches of soil dry out between watering can help avoid saturation and allow roots and soil organisms to breathe.

As we approach critical growing stages for corn and soybeans, which have already suffered amid the dry conditions, the final diagnosis for those crops is yet to be determined.

“The concerns are definitely there. ... The book’s not written yet. If we have consistent rains through July and August, we could still make a decent crop in a lot of places,” Ford said. “We have seen some effects, but the magnitude of those won’t really be understood until we get closer to harvest.

“With that being said, it’s unlikely that the crop has taken what we consider to be catastrophic impacts yet, at least not widespread.”

Ford added that the drought is an interesting example of how climate variability can interact with climate change: Despite the recent season’s mild temperatures and unusual dryness, long-term trends continue to indicate that Illinois will become hotter and wetter over time.

“What climate change does and when it comes into its own is when we talk about the likelihood of these kinds of things happening. Given the increasing trend of precipitation, I would expect that any given 30-year period in the next century would have a lower frequency of these types of [drought] than the 100 years that came before it – but it doesn’t mean that these kinds of events won’t happen.”

• Jenny Whidden is a climate change and environment writer working with the Daily Herald through a partnership with Report For America supported by The Nature Conservancy. To help support her work with a tax-deductible donation, see dailyherald.com/rfa.

https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20230711/more-rain-needed-to-escape-severe-drought-here