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Dryness gaining ground

From Marcus Hook to Caribou, Maine, Northeast now in the dry zone.

Only two months ago parts of New England were layered under record snows.

But in its update posted Thursday morning, the U.S. Drought Mitigation Center now has all of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in its beige "moderate drought" zone.

Most of New Jersey, and all of Vermont and New Hampshire and eastern Pennsylvania, and eastern New York are classified as being either "abnormally dry" or in "moderate drought."

Over 70 percent of the center's Northeastern region, from West Virginia to Maine, is in some state of dryness – compared with just 17 percent three months ago.

Around here, it seems the forecasts every day calls for a "chance of showers," and the dust seems to find it all amusing.

To date, the "wettest" of the eight counties has been Chester, which has had just 1.33 inches of rain in May, or about a third of normal. Bucks was sitting at 0.4 inches, or 11 percent of normal, according to the Middle Atlantic River Forecast Center.

Neither Pennsylvania nor New Jersey has hoisted any drought advisories yet, but drought is not a spectator sport, just one of those insidious processes, like aging.