AUGUSTA – The news about Maine’s drought conditions just keeps getting worse.

Not only did it not snow much this winter, but the flakes that did fall were dry and largely have melted in many areas of the state, members of the state’s Drought Task Force learned Thursday.

The snow on the ground now is about the driest ever recorded in the state, said Marc Loiselle of the Maine Geological Survey. He and others completed a snowpack survey earlier this week.

The water content of the remaining snow was among the lowest 25 percent ever recorded, Loiselle said. The worst conditions were along the coast and in far northern Maine.

In addition, snow typically still is falling at this time of year, he said. This year, the snow is melting quickly and many coastal and southern areas already are completely devoid of it.

The early snowmelt means river and stream levels currently are on the rise but that the melting snow likely won’t make it into the underground water table to recharge wells and lakes that are running out of water.

Ken Levesque of GNE LLC, the entity that runs the former hydroelectric concerns of Great Northern Paper Inc., said this is the worst snow year he’s seen in his 21 years of working on hydroelectric projects.

On the West Branch of the Penobscot River, his team measured an average of a little more than 19 inches of snow. That compares to the average of 27 inches measured over the last 10 years.

The snow on the ground this year contained just under 5 inches of water compared to an average of 7 inches, Levesque said.

“It’s the lowest I’ve ever seen,” he told the task force, a group from numerous state and federal government agencies formed last year.

Typically, those who measure the snowpack have to trudge to various sites on snowshoes. This year, they merely walked across the hard, crusty snow, Levesque added.

As Bob Lent, head of the U.S. Geological Survey in Maine, sees it, the below-normal winter precipitation coupled with the earlier-than-normal snowmelt means “a double whammy” for groundwater supplies.

The rains of recent weeks may at first appear to have helped the situation, but that isn’t true, several speakers told the task force. Because the ground is still frozen, the rain simply washed away into streams and rivers that ultimately head to the ocean, rather than slowly seeping in the ground.

The amount of water in 10 test wells across the state monitored by the U.S. Geological Survey continued to be below normal in February, said Greg Stewart of that agency. In fact, six of the wells set new record-low levels last month, he said.

Although this winter wasn’t the least snowy in history, it was well below average. In Bangor, 48 inches of snow has fallen this winter, compared to a historical average of 77 inches, said Hendricus Lulofs of the National Weather Service in Caribou.

Caribou typically averages 112 inches of snow, but only 62 has fallen this season.

There is no prediction of substantial snowfall in the near future, Lulofs said.

It was the second-warmest winter recorded in 107 years. In Caribou, the average temperature was 19 degrees, well above the normal 12, making this winter the warmest on record since 1939, Lulofs said.

Weather forecasters have predicted an El Nino weather pattern for this summer, which means the East Coast will experience warmer-than-normal temperatures and only average precipitation.

That’s bad news for Maine.

The state would need at least 11/2 times its normal precipitation to end the drought by this summer. There’s less than a 10 percent chance of that happening, said state climatologist Greg Zielinski.

“As far as the forecast, it doesn’t look good at all,” he said.

State drinking water officials are keeping a nervous watch on the situation. Thirty-nine small public drinking water systems, such as those at trailer parks, have gone dry, said Nancy Beardsley, director of the drinking water program within the Department of Human Services. About 2,000 private wells also have run dry, it is believed.

The situation is likely to get worse this summer when seasonal businesses that use a lot of water such as restaurants, hotels and campgrounds open for business, putting more demand on already low supplies, she said.