New York City declares drought watch and asks residents to conserve water

NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s mayor urged residents to take shorter showers, fix dripping faucets and otherwise conserve water as the city and much of the U.S. issued a drought warning on Saturday after a drought in October. warn.

The drought watch is the first of three potential levels of water conservation directives that Adams framed in a social media video as a step to try to avoid the possibility of more severe water shortages in the nation’s most populous city.

He ordered all city agencies to be ready to implement water conservation programs. He asked the public to do their part, for example, by turning off taps instead of hosing while brushing teeth and sweeping sidewalks.

“Nature is in charge, so we have to make sure we adjust,” said Adams, a Democrat.

National Weather Service records show that just 0.01 inches (0.02 centimeters) of rain fell in the city’s Central Park last month, compared with about 4.4 inches (11.2 centimeters) that typically fall in October. Rohit Aggarwala, director of the city’s Environmental Protection Department, said it was the driest October on record in more than 150 years.

Water shortages are compounded as the city repairs a large leaky aqueduct that carries water from the Catskill region, leaving residents more reliant on reservoirs in the city’s northern suburbs. The area received 0.81 inches (2 centimeters) of rain last month, about one-fifth of the average October rainfall, the mayor’s office said in a news release Saturday.

New York City uses an average of 1.1 billion gallons (4.2 billion liters) of water per day. That’s about 35% below the 1979 peak. The city attributed the decline to factors such as improvements in leak detection capabilities.

Last month, nearly half of the country fell into a flash drought, which means very little precipitation combined with unusually high temperatures results in rapid drought. The Northeast ended the month with an unusually warm (even weird) Halloween, with temperatures in the high 70s and 80s (24 to 28 degrees Celsius) from New York to Maine.

Experts attribute the sudden drought to weather patterns that prevent moisture from moving north from the Gulf of Mexico.

Dry weather has restricted shipping on the Mississippi River and contributed to wildfires in the Midwest and East.

The National Weather Service on Saturday continued to warn of elevated fire risks in places like Connecticut, where a firefighter died last month while battling a day-long brush fire that was apparently started by an unquenched Camp Fire of.