Dry conditions in the Northeast are worsening, creating a scenario where fire danger continues in the region, an updated map from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows.

The worst drought conditions are in much of West Virginia, several counties in southern New Jersey and three counties in southwestern Pennsylvania — all of which are in extreme drought, according to the Drought Monitor.

Most of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and West Virginia are in severe drought, the map shows.

The drought situation currently facing the Northeast was heavily driven by the lack of precipitation in October, Samantha Borisoff, a climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, told ABC News.

Major cities like Philadelphia, Newark and Washington, D.C. are among the regions that experience long periods without measurable precipitation, Borisoff said.

“October was the driest month on record for a handful of states,” Borisoff said. “The I-95 corridor in particular was exceptionally dry.”

Some rain was expected to fall in Pennsylvania and South Jersey on Thursday, but no precipitation reached the rest of New Jersey, New York City and most of New England – all regions in desperate need of moisture after an extremely dry fall .

Since early September, an area from Baltimore to Boston has lacked about 6 to 10 inches of rain, Borisoff said.

“It will take several slow, soaking rainstorms to really eliminate these shortages,” Borisoff said. “Right now, the next seven days (don’t) look too conducive to much precipitation.”

The dry conditions will lead to a continued increased risk of wildfires in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont as relative humidity drops up to 15% in some regions. Fire danger will increase further in the northeast from Friday due to persistently low humidity, warmer temperatures and higher wind speeds, forecasts show.

The Jennings Creek Fire, a massive fire burning in both New Jersey and New York, is the largest fire in New York State since the Roosa Gap Fire in 2008. In the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan, the New York Fire Department was battling a extensive fire. forest fire that broke out on Wednesday afternoon.

The New Jersey Forest Fire Service has experienced a 1,300% increase in firefighter response, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday. Since the beginning of October, the state’s fire department has responded to 500 more fires than the same period last year, Murphy said.

In New Jersey, the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI) currently stands at 748 out of 800 – the highest they have seen in the 118-year history of the wildland fire service, Greg McLaughlin, chief of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, told reporters Wednesday.

Mandatory water restrictions may remain in place as the lack of precipitation continues. The restrictions will be a short-term solution to the problem, Eran Friedler, head of the Grand Water Research Institute at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, told ABC News.

On Wednesday, New Jersey American Water, the largest water utility in the state, issued a mandatory statewide conservation notice. All customers across the state are asked to limit all non-essential water use by pausing all outdoor watering until spring and conserve as much as possible indoors.

The state of New Jersey raised its drought level from a drought warning to a drought warning on Wednesday, with Murphy asking residents to take water conservation seriously. He warned that mandatory restrictions could be imposed if people do not do the right thing.

Regions that rely on replenishing reservoirs from rainfall could start issuing more mandatory conservation measures as the drought continues, Borisoff said.

Advocating to the public can be an effective way to alleviate the region’s drought, Friedler said.

“It could be very effective to tell people that the situation is tough and that they need to take tough measures,” he said.

Climate change may be playing a role in the extremely dry conditions, Murphy said.

A new study of UCLA found that human-amplified climate change and higher temperatures are turning some common droughts into exceptional ones.

While the general long-term trend in the Northeast points to wetter conditions, warmer-than-normal temperatures, which the region has experienced so far this fall, could lead to extreme periods of drought, Borisoff said. The warmer temperatures can increase the rate of evaporation, causing conditions to dry out more quickly, she said.

“We had a handful of locations across the I-95 corridor that recorded the highest maximum temperatures for the month of November,” she said.

ABC News’ Matthew Glasser, Max Golembo and Dan Peck contributed to this report.