The low pressure train continue to have eyes on New England. The latest series of storms will just miss southern New England and eventually wind up like a top off the coast of Maine tonight with near blizzard conditions. Being on the back side of the low pressure area Connecticut will luckily only see gusty northwest winds later tonight and tomorrow. Temperatures will be near seasonal levels for the next couple days. A warming trend will start this weekend but will be short lived as winter returns for last 10 days of February continuing into March. Stay tuned.

West central Connecticut continues to be in a very serious drought situation with historic low levels of water in city and town reservoirs. Pictured above is Wasel Reservoir in Southington owned by the city of New Britain and the water levels are startling low as you can see. Rainfall has been below normal for the last three years with last year at only 31 inches when the normal rainfall should be around 46 inches. The last time there was such a severe drought in Connecticut was in the middle 1960’s, fifty years ago. Droughts like the one we’re experiencing now is cyclical and will continue for at least the next six months. It will take two years to get our local reservoir to capacity under normal conditions. The city of New Britain is purchasing water daily from The Metropolitan District Commission in Hartford to push water levels up close to 50%. Since December 1st, 5 millions gallons of untreated water are pumped daily from the MDC into New Britain’s water supply and will continue until the end of this month. So please be conscientious with your daily water usage so we can soon end this historic drought.

Just a little fun here being six weeks before the official start to spring. Each February 2nd, television cameras from all over focus on the ground hog. If the groundhog sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter, and if he doesn’t, there will be an early spring. This curious weather observance is another piece of a forgotten lore that had a 2nd revival back on February 2, 1898 at The Ground Hog Club of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania where 7 men from the town met on Kobblers Knob. Their spring fun lead to a little hill being titled “weather capital of the hill” at a ground hog burrow, and the rest is history.