Drought Rebound

MONROE CITY, IND. (WTHI) -       The Wabash Valley might not yet be out of the drought of 2012, but recent rains have things looking better.

     During September some parts of Indiana received as much rain as landed on them through the 4 previous months combined.

     While much of southern Indiana may still be as much as 9 inches short of its average rainfall, in one hard hit community there are a lot of signs of recovery.

     Monroe city turned brown this summer.

     Part of it was caused by the heat and dry conditions.

     The other part came when the city put mandatory water restrictions in place.

     "I noticed the springs were beginning to dry up," said Monroe City Water Superintendent Don Davis, "and so we checked the wells to see what the levels were doing and we discovered the levels were dropping."

     The restrictions may may left the community looking awfully dry, but they worked.

     "The thing that I was impressed about most was as soon as we issued that our consumption dropped dramatically," added Davis.  "Cut it in half."

     You can easily see a lot of the recovery from the drought.

  Instead of brown you have green grass.

 The only color change is the seasonal stuff that's going on with the trees.

 There now are puddles where there used to be dust piles and most importantly the aquifer has begun its recovery.

     "I don't think it's there yet," said Davis.  "I'm expecting more, but we're in pretty good shape where we're sitting because our wells are in a lower area and I think we're seeing the recovery quicker."

     Good news as the area looks to get back to 'water normal' after the driest summer in a half century.

     While water supplies are recovering the economic impact of the drought continues to be felt by farmers who are getting less than one third of their normal crop yield during this harvest.