Despite an early morning sprinkling Friday, Lancaster County remains in a drought, as October finished up as the second driest month since record-keeping began. According to Millersville Weather Information Center, just 0.04 inches of rain fell in October. In the 110 years since meteorologists began tracking that data, only October 1963 was drier. No rain fell that month. October culminated in the hottest Halloween on record , with a high of 84 degrees, eclipsing the 1946 record of 81. Temperatures fell to the upper 40s overnight. The first day of November started with some light rain, but Millersville Weather Information Center Director Kyle Elliott said there was not enough to be measurable at Millersville, and no more than a few hundredths of an inch fell in other parts of the county. Lancaster is under a drought watch alongside 32 other counties in the state, with Berks and Schuylkill counties under a drought warning, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Drought Task Force. Under these conditions, county residents are encouraged to reduce their water usage by 5% to 10%. The U.S. Drought Monitor last week classified Lancaster and surrounding counties in a moderate drought stage, with severe drought conditions creeping in from the east through Chester and Berks counties. There is little relief on the horizon, as the jet stream, a weather current that brings rain, is abnormally far north this year, Elliott said. While this is happening, any potential storms and rain likely will be weak and short in duration. A dry harvest Jeff Graybill, an agronomy educator at Penn State Extension, said with dry conditions during harvest, the ground around fields is essentially a tinderbox. “Corn fodder can be quite flammable,” Graybill said, with thin leaves fueling fast fires. “It can march across a field pretty darn quickly.” More than 40 brush and woodland fires have kept emergency crews across the county busy throughout October. The National Weather Service in State College on Friday issued a red flag warning for Lancaster and surrounding counties throughout the day, saying conditions for wildfire growth and spread were dangerously high. Along with flammable conditions, cover crops that are planted in the fall may not root as easily in dry and dusty conditions. Cover crops, such as clover and rye, protect soil over the winter from heavy rains and freezes. With dry fields, those crops may not take, leaving parts of the land unprotected. “If (a crop) hasn\’t germinated and grown, or if it\’s just been so dry that it\’s only a couple of inches tall, it\’s not going to protect the soil as much as you would want it to,” Graybill said. State Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding in a news release said water restrictions proposed by the DEP do not apply to farms and advised farmers to be prepared to take advantage of crop insurance in extreme weather. “Water is essential for growing food. Voluntary restrictions do not apply to farms and other businesses that rely on it to produce food,” Redding said. “Risks and volatility in farming are weather-related more than in any other business. Pennsylvania’s beneficial natural average rainfall has been upended by weather extremes and unpredictability in recent years, and 2024 is no exception.\” While a dry fall can make harvesting grown crops easier, at this point all farmers can do is hope for a change in the weather to fortify the next season. “Pray for rain, really,” Graybill said. “That’s all you can really do, unfortunately.”