Does Pennsylvania need to prepare for a drought?

• Asia Tabb
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Asia Tabb is the Host and Producer for WITF’s The Spark.
  
  She began her start in radio when she joined legendary radio/ host producer, Doc Christian. She worked closely with Doc for her role on “The Gospel Express, on WHOV 88.1 FM and was a host for “Unrestricted Praise” at Praise FM.
  
  Previously she was an anchor in Shreveport, Louisiana at KTAL/KMSS. Asia also worked as a Multi-Media Journalist at WHP-TV here in Harrisburg, PA.
  
  Asia got her break into news at KTVO in Ottumwa, Ia. While the 2020 caucuses were gearing up. Asia followed many candidates through their campaign trail from Senator Cory Booker, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and 46th President of the United States Joe Biden.
  
  Asia was born and raised in Norfolk, Va. She graduated from Old Dominion University in 2018 with a major in Communications.
  
  Asia is extremely friendly so don’t be afraid to say hi if you see her out and about.

Meteorologist Dan Tomaso from ABC 27 WHTM joined The Spark to update us on the upcoming weather. We are in another heatwave, and that could possibly impact Centra PA residents with a drought.

“So let me go to a formal definition here. So, there’s something called a rapid onset drought. And that’s probably what most people are familiar with. And what you can typically see with that is your lawn, maybe your garden really beginning to dry out. So, it’s really, sensitive vegetation that you can see, really take a hit in that type of environment. So, a flash drought or a rapid onset drought is when we see an intense intensification of any type of dry condition due to changes in precipitation, temperature, wind and then increasing sun. So, we’ve had that over the last month that we’ve had a lot of sunny days with very few areas of cloud or showers. And what that does is it really limits how much moisture is getting back into the air. So, we have a lot of rain, the plants, the trees, they also give off rain through a process called evapotranspiration. So, it’s basically the plants, the trees breathing moisture into the air. Also, when there’s a lot of rain the soil moisture is very, very high. So, in the morning we can see two or we can see fog. Sometimes at this time of the year when there’s a drought setting in, you don’t see a whole lot of it. You don’t see a lot of morning Dew; you don’t see a lot of fog. So, when we start losing moisture from the trees due to heat stress from our plants, also from the moisture from the soil moisture, that’s when drought really sets. And that’s when you kind of see the dry, crunchy grass. You see the really dry soils, the loose soils. And on a windy day too, you can see that soil being kind of lifted into the air. Now, again, this is not talking about the severe drought of the desert southwest right, the West Coast, United States, we see a lot of videos from. But they do have impact here in Pennsylvania.”

Listen to the podcast to learn more about drought season in PA.