4 August 2025
Where I live in the City of Pittsburgh it looks like we’re in a drought. The ground is dry and plants are wilting as seen at this photo near Herrs Island yesterday.
Are we in a drought?
The U.S. Drought Monitor map indicates that the Eastern U.S. is just fine.
Pittsburgh’s year-to-date weather graph shows just a slight dropoff in expected rainfall at the end of July. Otherwise we’re fine.
For comparison, click here to see Morgantown’s temperature and rainfall graph YTD 2025. They have had lots of rain.
Pittsburgh day-to-day rainfall in July tells an interesting story. It barely rained before I went to Finland on 13 July and has barely rained since I returned. But I missed more than an inch of rain in Moon Twp on 16 July. Did it rain here in the City on that day?
I ask this question because lately, when the National Weather Service predicts rain for Pittsburgh, it rains everywhere else in the region but the clouds part — north and south — before they reach the City.
You can see this happening on 31 July 2025 in these historical radar screenshots from weather.us. I remember this quite vividly because I canceled plans to attend an outing in Butler County as there was supposed to be heavy rain. Hah!
Historical radar screenshots from weather.us
Click here to see historical radar images at weather.us including other dates and places.
It seems I’m living in a localized drought. Is this happening to you, too?
UPDATE: On 12 August 2025 the US Drought Monitor shows we are Abnormally Dry
I often note on the radar that storms seem to split around the “Golden Triangle”. I wonder if the 3 rivers generate an air pressure or thermal area that detour the storms?
I also wonder if the urban heat island at the Point causes a split
Yea, I bear witness as well to storms breaking up and going North and South of the city. Here in Carnegie it feels like we are at that southern edge. That being said, we haven’t had rain here in weeks. With nothing predicted outside a low chance on Wednesday Aug 13th.
I was just wondering about this myself as I’ve been seeing the grass around where I live get drier and “drought-ier” looking recently. Given that we aren’t in a drought, I was thinking that maybe the ground is losing more water to the air than normal given how low the humidity has been since the cooler, drier air moved in late last week. Perhaps if it were still swampy out things wouldn’t look so dry?