OAImages Blog

Those who know me are often reminded that I am a transplanted Northerner.   Folks here in the South use a different and less tactful name to describe what I am.    Yet as I’ve been here a while now, I’ve taken an interest in some of the local history.  

We have had an unsually hot and dry Summer here this year.   Sure it happens from time to time.  Extreme weather is to be expected here in the South.   But this is the driest I can remember it.   Every day last month the high temperature was in the 90s and we broke 100 several times.   Very little rain has fallen at my house since Spring.  Parts of my yard where I haven’t been heavily watering have been cut only once since June.   Cities all around us are under various types of water usage restrictions but not Burlington.   Why that is so makes an interesting story.

Earlier this summer while the current dry spell was not particularly notable I was reminded of a past drought.   This was brought up again this past August 25th by a columnist in the local Burlington Times-News.   Don Bolden, editor emeritus, writes:

Back on Aug. 15 I saw a weather program in which the meteorologist said we had established a new record for the day with a reading of 99 degrees.

That didn’t catch my attention too much. After all, we had been playing in the low 100s before that. When you have been to 101, 103, 104, it makes 99 seem a bit tame.

But something else did catch my attention. The weather guy said the old record had been 97 degrees, established back on Aug. 15, 1954.

The summer and fall of 1954 made up one of the driest periods in the history of this county in recent memory. The preceding year had been dry as well, but 1954 was really bad. Long periods without rain, hot, hot summer temperatures, and it was a miserable time.

The summers of 1953 and 1954 were very dry here in central North Carolina; a major drought was in progress.   The crops — largely tobacco then — were hard hit and severe water restrictions were in place.   By late Summer in 1954 Burlington was in desperate straits.   I was told the local reservoir had run dry and the primary source of water had become the dwindling waters of the Haw River, not much of a river here even in normal years.    But nature seems to have a way of correcting its deficiences:

…That 1954 drought was ended in one of the most remarkable and memorable storms ever to hit Alamance County. People who lived here then will certainly remember Hurricane Hazel. That storm hit Alamance County on Oct. 15 and, among other things it did, it ended our drought.

Communities all over the county had restrictions on the use of water — no water for lawns, none for washing cars, none for outside plants. And residents were given instructions on how to save water in the house. It was a bad time.

But Hazel ended all those problems with more than 6 inches of rain in just a very few hours on that October date. The storm’s wind did a lot of damage across the county…

Hurricane Hazel struck North Carolina just south of Wilmington as a strong category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 150 mph.  It became extratropical as it passed over Raleigh, NC, still with winds of category 3 strength.   The 113 mph gust recorded in New York City from this storm is still the strongest on record there.  It continued northward and had a major impact on the city of Toronto!   I was told within a day, that city reservoir went from bone dry to overflowing.

In the aftermath of the storm, the Burlington city council had the foresight to make plans to protect the city from another severe drought.   An additional reservoir was built and plans were made to secure supplies of drinking water as the city grew.   In the 1990s, Lake Mackintosh became the city’s primary source of water, named after one of the city leaders from the early 1950s.    Now as cities around northcentral North Carolina suffer dwindling water supplies, we are under no restrictions here and actually sell some of our water to the city of Greensboro.

As an interesting aside, the original city lake has since been drained and is now the site of an apartment complex.  This same complex is where I first moved to when I came to North Carolina in 1992… shortly after another major hurricane, Hurricane Andrew.

History has a way of repeating itself.   Will the drought of 2007 end like the drought of 1954, with a major hurricane strike?   While we need the rain, I am certainly hoping we can get it without another storm like Hazel.

NB:  The image at the top is 2003’s Hurricane Isabel stricking North Carolina’s Outer Banks.