As we remain mired in our worst statewide drought in more than 18 years, comparisons with historical droughts — especially that memorable 2007-08 event — have become common in recent weeks, including in our own assessment of the current drought and its impacts.
We’ve generally labeled the 2007-08 drought as the worst in North Carolina’s modern history, but by some metrics, another drought from a century ago could also stake claim to that title.
During that event, drought gripped much of the state in 1925 and 1926, leaving water supplies running short and farms on the brink of failure. In that sense, it was North Carolina’s own Dust Bowl a decade before drought devastated the central US.
In this lookback, we’ll explore the emergence, intensification, and persistence of the 1925-26 drought, as well as its intensity, the changes to water supplies it informed, and takeaways for our current drought event.
Drought Takes Root in 1925
Few realized it at the outset of the 2007 drought, but that event would follow a remarkably similar trajectory as in 1925.
Both droughts first emerged in western North Carolina, with records from the Southern Power Company tracing the beginning of the dry spell back to February 1925. That meant the newly completed Rhodhiss Reservoir near Hickory didn’t have a chance to fill up, or meet its potential as an auxiliary power supply, before drought descended on the region.
As the growing season got underway during the state’s 6th-driest spring on record, impacts to agriculture became apparent. By June, the western hay crop had already been reduced by three-quarters, the tobacco in Greensboro and Madison was in bad shape, and there were no fresh vegetables at the market in Mooresville.
With few major reservoirs constructed at that time and most areas drawing water from rivers or groundwater wells, concerns about water shortages and insufficient power generation arose early that summer.
Rhodhiss Dam, seen here in 1926 shortly after its opening, struggled to impound much water early in the 1925 drought. (Photo courtesy Duke Energy)
As in 2007, the drought degraded to critical levels during one particularly hot, dry summer month. In 2007, that was August. In 1925, that happened in July, which still stands as the 7th-driest July on record statewide, and the driest for western areas like Statesville, which had only 0.28 inches of rain all month.
That meant cities like Mount Airy implemented outdoor watering restrictions while the town of East Bend prepared to deepen its well that had dried up. The flow on some mountain streams became insufficient for power generation, forcing Franklin to turn off its street lights at night.
While eastern areas, which weren’t hit as hard by the drought in the summer of 1925, enjoyed a bumper crop of tobacco, the same wasn’t true farther west. As one article noted, “gloom now rests heavier on all tillers in this vicinity.”
Crop losses in July totaled more than $10 million – or more than $186 million today, adjusted for inflation – including $9.288 million to tobacco alone, with a loss of 36 million pounds.
Workers on a tobacco farm in Wilson County – an area that didn’t have as severe of a drought – circa 1926. (Photo from the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives)
Summer Severity
At the time, it was claimed that “[t]he drought and heat that have prevailed this summer do not have a parallel in all history.” Indeed, that was the 2nd-warmest and overall driest summer on record through that point in our state’s recordkeeping, although the summer of 1925 has now slipped to the 21st-warmest and 6th-driest on record.
By August, our mountain landscape began to ignite, most prominently with a large wildfire on Grandfather Mountain. Similar to the statewide burn ban implemented in August 2007, and in late March of this year, there were consequences in 1925 as well: a hefty $50 fine (the equivalent of more than $900 today) was levied on anyone caught starting a fire outdoors.
And like in 2007, when water restrictions became widespread during the fall, conservation measures were tightened by September of 1925. That month, the drought was amplified by record high temperatures in Charlotte and the latest 100-degree day on record in Greensboro.
A postcard depicting downtown Charlotte along Tryon Street circa 1925. (Image from Georgia Treasures)
In order to preserve enough water for hydroelectric production along their streams, the Southern Power Company asked 300 textile mills to stop running – initially one day per week, then bumped up to two days, and eventually two and a half.
So dire was the water shortage in 1925 that Asheboro began bringing in trainloads of water from High Point to meet even conservative demands, and in the Mountains, “springs from which families have drawn their water for generations are dried up.” Southern governors sought help from the divine – in 1925, as in 2007.
Despite slightly wetter-than-normal conditions in October and November, 1925 finished as our 5th-driest year on record statewide, and the driest on record for much of western North Carolina, including Morganton, Brevard, and Cullowhee – each of which was more than 20 inches below their average annual precipitation. For that reason, it was called “the year of the great drought” for the Mountains and Piedmont.
The North Toe River and Tar Heel Mica Plant in Plumtree, NC, circa 1925. (Photo from NC Digital Collection via Avery History Hunters)
Drought Roars Back in 1926
The winter of 1925-26 offered some reasons for hope, but also causes for concern that the drought wasn’t over yet. Parts of the state saw wetter weather in January, which we now recognize was a side effect of that winter’s El Niño event. However, that pattern set up unusually far to the east, which also seemed to shift its impacts eastward, bringing more rain to coastal areas while the southern Mountains stayed dry.
Entering the growing season, the Weather Bureau noted that the cool-season rainfall was “not enough to soak into the soil to any considerable depth,” and as dry weather returned that spring, even eastern Piedmont locales like Raleigh faced low water supplies.
The summer of 1926 wasn’t as hot or as dry as in 1925, but the crop prospects were “anything but encouraging.” The ongoing drought again affected tobacco and threatened the harvest of small grains, while the cotton could not advance in the west.
After a final resurgence of dryness that fall, including our 11th-driest September on record, heavy rains arrived by November and helped wind down the drought entering the next winter.
For farmers, though, the damage had been done, as drought was just one complicating factor in an overall challenging time during the 1920s. That period also saw the decline of World War I-era European demand for cotton and tobacco, and the emergence of the boll weevil pest that devastated the cotton crop. Facing those pressures, 16% of farms in South Carolina were abandoned by the end of the decade.
Workers pick cotton in a field near Asheboro prior to the closure of the local mill in 1925. (Photo by George Russell courtesy Randolph History)
The 1925-26 Drought, In Context
Amid our current drought, you’re most likely to hear comparisons to the 2007-08 event, given its recency and severity. But if you listen closely, you may just see some 1925 references as well. For instance, Jefferson is off to its 4th-driest start to a year on record, but 1925 was more than an inch drier through this point in late April.
We can compare droughts from different eras using the Palmer Drought Severity Index and its family of related indicators, which use temperatures and precipitation to assess the moisture inbalance. For instance, the Palmer Z-Index shows that North Carolina’s driest two-year period since 1895 occurred in 2007-08, with 1925-26 not far behind.
And shifting that 24-month window to run from November to October, rather than January to December, the 1924-26 drought becomes slightly drier than the same period in 2006-08.
Since the US Drought Monitor didn’t begin officially tracking conditions until 2000, we can’t tell exactly how widespread Extreme or Exceptional Drought might have been back in 1925-26, but the Palmer indices can again offer a reasonable approximation.
The 24-month Palmer Z-Index since 1895 shows the 1925-26 drought at a similar level of dryness as the 2007-08 drought. (Data from NCEI Climate at a Glance)
The Palmer Drought Severity Index reached its most extreme drought category in the southern Mountains by July 1925, with the southern Piedmont following in August, and the rest of the Mountains and Piedmont hitting that level in September.
Given that severity, as well as impacts like water shortages and failed crops, it’s fair to assume much of the state saw Exceptional Drought-level conditions in 1925. That would put its peak intensity on par with the 2007 drought, with perhaps slightly less coverage across the Coastal Plain.
We can also quantify each drought’s longevity using statewide precipitation deficits. In 1925, we stacked up eight consecutive drier-than-normal months statewide between February and September, then another seven in a row from April to October 1926.
The 2007 drought began with 10 consecutive dry months from December 2006 to September 2007. In our current drought, April is set to be our eighth dry month in a row since last September.
The Palmer Drought Severity Index showed the most severe category in the Mountains and Piedmont of North Carolina by September 1925. (Map from NCEI Climate at a Glance)
Worries About Water
In the aftermath of the 1925-26 drought, attention turned to bolstering our water supplies, given their usage in hydroelectric generation, industry, and drinking water.
“The shortage of water all over the state during the summer indicates the imperative need of taking a more serious look at the water supply problem,” stated one editorial column from December 1926.
A University of North Carolina Newsletter likewise put forward that “the best, and generally the cheapest, method of ensuring an adequate supply of power at all times is to provide for storage of some of the surplus flow of wet periods to be used in time of drought.”
That kick-started a boom of new reservoir construction over the next half century. High Rock Lake, which supported Alcoa’s aluminum smelting plant, was filled in 1928. The New Deal-era Tennessee Valley Authority created several western reservoirs including Fontana Lake, which was finished in 1944.
Fontana Dam, seen here at night in 1952, is the tallest dam in the eastern US at 480 feet. (Photo from the North Carolina State Archives)
Lake Norman was the last, and largest, of Duke Energy’s manmade lakes along the Catawba River to be completed in the early 1960s, and Falls Lake near Raleigh was constructed in the late 1970s.
That increased capacity for water storage has boosted our supply and added a measure of drought resilience, but demands have also increased over time. North Carolina’s population has almost quadrupled in the past century, with more people packed into cities and pulling from the same water sources.
That’s why we can still see water restrictions during long-lasting or extreme droughts like the current one, and why frustrations about how water is used happen now as much as they did back then.
Proximity Mills, a textile mill in Greensboro, and the adjoining worker’s village are seen here circa 1925. (Public domain photo courtesy of Hathi Trust Digital Library)
Lessons Learned, Then and Now
Our drought from 100 years ago can offer a few other lessons for modern-day North Carolina. For one, we see the folly of prematurely proclaiming the end of the drought. In Boone that June, in Concord in September, and statewide the following summer, the drought was declared broken after one or two rain events, only for its impacts to re-intensify in the months that followed.
That’s a reminder that drought is not just skin-deep, and facing double-digit rainfall deficits, it will take more than one event, or even one wet month, to fully recharge our lakes, soil moisture reserves, and groundwater stores.
We also see the importance of timing, and how hot, dry weather in the summer can be much more impactful than a few dry months over the winter. The 1925 and 2007 droughts both ramped up amid intense summer dry spells, and several weeks of hot, dry weather this spring have driven the emergence of Exceptional Drought in the southern Piedmont this week.
Monthly statewide precipitation departures from the 1901-2000 average in 1925 and 1926. (Data from NCEI Climate at a Glance)
We often think about hurricanes as the best cure for a drought, but that wasn’t the case in either 1925-26 or in 2007-08 — and we can’t count on one this year, either. The most significant tropical system of 1926 – the Great Nassau Hurricane – brought only light and scattered rain to North Carolina, and the 2008 drought improved with better springtime rainfall.
It’s too early to tell whether the 2025-26 drought will eventually end up in the conversation as the worst on record for our state, but if it does, then it will have gotten there from a very different trajectory – initially emerging mostly in our cooler months – than the droughts of 1925-26 and 2007-08.
But with many common impacts and stresses across those three events, it’s clear that while the pathways into drought can differ, the need for awareness, conservation, and long-term planning holds just as true today as it did a hundred years ago.
