Arid climate strikes region

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Apples are falling off the trees at Peters Family Orchard and Cider Mill in Acushnet, Mass.

Burdened by a heavy load of fruit and weakened by a lack of water, the tree limbs droop. A good spring helped produce a bumper crop, but the dry summer has prevented the fruit from developing, owner John Charles Peters said. The smaller apples have already started to drop, and Peters won’t be harvesting until late September.

“If we get a little bit of rain between now and then, it will help,” Peters said.

Crops in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, as well as backyard gardens, are wilting in the dry, hot weather. The region normally gets about 8.5 inches of rain from June to mid-August, but only 2 inches have been recorded in Rhode Island this summer, said Allen Dunham, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass.

In Massachusetts, Cape Cod and Bristol and Plymouth counties have been similarly dry.

“There’s technically not a drought, but it has been a hot and dry summer,” said Kathleen Crawley, acting general manager of the Rhode Island Water Resources Board. While some cities and towns have instituted water restrictions, the biggest affect has been on farmers, she said.

Alfred Bettencourt, executive director of the Rhode Island Farm Bureau, said some farmers who don’t irrigate have lost half of their crop or more.

The Rhode Island Drought Steering Committee, which includes representatives from state agencies, the National Weather Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, met Tuesday for the first time since January 2003. The committee advises Gov. Don Carcieri, who has the power to declare a drought emergency.

The committee did not suggest that Carcieri declare a drought, but will meet again in mid-September, Crawley said.

In northern New England, it’s a different story. Some areas are dry, while others have received adequate rainfall thanks to summer thunderstorms.

Harry Ricker of Ricker Orchards said his main farm in Turner, Maine, will have smaller fruit because of dry conditions. Some of his other orchards are doing much better, having received an addition 1 to 2 inches of rainfall during localized storms.

“I don’t think this year’s drought is going to hurt the apple orchards overall. But it’s going to hurt it in spots,” said Renae Moran, a tree fruit specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension in Monmouth.

Carolyn DeMoranville, director of the University of Massachusetts Cranberry Station, said the dry, hot weather is producing smaller cranberries and could present a problem when the berries are harvested next month.

Cranberry farmers flood their fields with about a foot of water to loosen and collect the berries. With 14,000 acres of cranberry bogs in Southeastern Massachusetts, “That’s a lot of water,” DeMoranville said.

As for homeowners, they shouldn’t be overly concerned about their lawns turning brown, said Rosanne Sherry, a master gardener at the University of Rhode Island Cooperative Extension.

“What happens naturally here in New England is our grasses, our lawn grasses, are cool season grasses,” Sherry said. Lawns go dormant, looking brown and dead, in the summer heat, but they will revive and become green when autumn weather arrives, she said.

“I tell people now, go to the beach, go to the movies, go to the mall, don’t worry about it,” Sherry said.