What Low Water Levels Mean For Pennsylvania

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

April 27, 2012 | 1:40 PM

Worried about Pennsylvania’s low water levels? Listen to today’s Radio Smart Talk on witf, which featured interviews with experts from the Department of Environmental Protection and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission:

Last year was one the wettest on record in some Pennsylvania communities. All you have to is remember last fall’s flooding after Tropical Storm Lee that resulted in millions of dollars in damage. Then came a winter that was almost snowless — that is excerpt for a bizarre snowstorm on October 29. The winter was warmer than normal too.
The dry, mild winter left the Susquehanna River at its lowest level since 1910 and 1946 — two years that resulted in droughts.
This time last week, a drought seemed to be a real possibility. Then it rained earlier this week. Is that rainfall enough to take us out of danger?