Philadelphia is approaching a new drought record

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It's been at least 25 days since Philadelphia saw anything measurable According to the National Weather Service, there was rain, the longest rain since 2001.

The city's drought comes as the Delaware Valley is dealing with a moderate to severe drought, with near-record rainfall last month.

According to the National Integrated Drought Information System, Philadelphia County not only received only 25-50% of normal precipitation for this time of year, but temperatures were also 3-6 degrees above normal.

Meteorologist Alex Staarmann said the NWS noted a possible drought in early August.

“It was pretty dry overall across our region,” Staarmann said. “Much of our area experienced significantly less rainfall than normal throughout September. There was some heavy rain in early August, at least heavy rain in places, particularly with the remnants of Tropical Storm Debby.”

“At the end of September it looked like at least the first two or three weeks of October were going to be pretty dry, and so far that actually seems to be holding true,” Staarmann said.

Staarmann said no significant rainfall is expected for the remainder of October, potentially extending into the first week of November.

In southwestern and coastal southern New Jersey, the 90-day precipitation status for the area was classified as moderate to severely dry.