The Triangle's ongoing drought is the worst in at least 113 years -- as long as reliable records have been kept -- federal meteorologists say.

One Raleigh official says he heard it's more like 800.

Can silent trees tell us?

In a recent televised interview, Dale Crisp, Raleigh's public utilities director, said the Capital City has managed its water supply at Falls Lake fairly well, considering the prehistoric severity of drought.

"We're getting data from the weather service that says this may be the worst drought in 800 years -- yet we haven't run out of water," Crisp said.

Meteorologists and hydrologists at the National Weather Service's Raleigh office say they've issued no 800-year comparisons.

"In all of our references with respect to the historical nature of the drought, we have not mentioned any dates prior to 1895, when drought indicators were really first used," said Jeff Orrock, the office's warning coordination meteorologist. "As of November, we were in the worst drought over the last 100-150 years. But there was never any mention of the last 800 years."

Asked what his source was for the 800-year reference, Crisp said he thought he had heard it several times from Ryan Boyles, North Carolina's state climatologist.

"He has made this type of comment at a couple of public meetings on the drought that I have attended," Crisp said. Asked directly about it, Boyles gave a more nuanced view.

Tree-ring data going back 800 years indicate that "depending on which measure you use, 2007 ranks on up there," Boyles said.

Based on precipitation across the state last year, 2007 was the driest year in North Carolina since record-keeping began in 1895, Boyles said. But it was not as dry around Raleigh as it was in 1933, the year of a highly-localized drought that parched the Triangle.

Drought, however, is more than just rainfall and temperature, Boyles noted. It includes such factors as soil moisture, stream flows and groundwater levels, and we don't have records or estimates of them going back 800 years.

Add to the equation today's much greater public demand for water, and the historic picture is complicated further, he said. That's because a drought's severity is largely a subjective measure of its impacts on people.

The bottom line, Boyle said:

"I can't tell you with confidence if 2007 was actually the worst drought in 800 years. We don't have the data we need, and comparing historical regional drought reconstructions based on tree rings with current drought indexes is comparing apples and oranges."

The trees, alas, are speechless.