11 ms·

US Drought Monitor

195 points by pilingual 4y ago

pantalaimon 4y ago
Same for Germany: https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937 https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937
ruddct 4y ago
Drought.gov also has interesting graphs, historical context and descriptions of the various severity levels. https://www.drought.gov/states/california https://www.drought.gov/states/california
Waterluvian 4y ago
Very cool. A few comments (which probably need to be emailed to them and not just put here): 1. The main page map absolutely NEEDS a legend. 2. I wonder if any sort of drought map should also include the other half of the spectrum. Are are blank regions normal? Exceptionally wet? Flooding?
- icegreentea2 4y ago
  The linked page does have a legend just below the map. Look for "Intensity and Impacts".
matthewdgreen 4y ago
The consequences of global warming used to be a “future” concern. Starting to feel like that was extremely optimistic.
- Guid_NewGuid 4y ago
  Strong same. While 1 swallow doesn't make a summer the combination of 1/3rd of Pakistan being underwater plus heatwaves in Europe and blackouts in China with all the other stuff does get concerning. Maybe the 'establishment' causing scientists to only disclose the most conservative and defensible estimates misled us as to how fast and severe this thing would be. I caught myself getting frustrated the supermarket was out of instant coffee the other day and realized I'm in no way mentally prepared for what's coming.
  - joe_the_user 4y ago
    I think establishment science has talked about increased weather variability as a result of the slowing of the jetstream for a while. No one done a good job in saying "So a one degree increase overall can mean five or ten degrees increase hovering over a given area for weeks and that's devastating and deadly in many places, especially areas that have already pushed their ecology and infrastructure to the edge".
- ben_w 4y ago
  For me, yes and no at the same time. The average increase is slow, steady, and not too far from what I was expecting… but the geographic variation and the behaviour of the extremes is much stronger than I expected.
  - mellavora 4y ago
    > The average increase is slow, steady, I'm not sure about that. This year is a significant uptick from 3 years ago where I live (central Europe). I did notice a slow warming since 2006 (when I moved to my current location), but even 2 years ago there were only a few summer nights where you could comfortably sit outside after dark without a jacket. It has been that warm every single night this summer. If you want to see it on a global scale, look at the oceans. It has been "steady" there, though not slow, https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ocean-heat/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ocean-heat/ And most of the heat (90%) has gone into the ocean. Now the oceans are warm, so we will see it on land. I'm expecting rapid acceleration over the next 10 years, not slow, and certainly not steady. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/01/extreme-heat-oceans-passed-point-of-no-return-high-temperatures-wildlife-seas https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/01/extreme-...
    - ben_w 4y ago
      > This year is a significant uptick from 3 years ago where I live Too short a time scale and too localised geographically to count as "average". First time I visited the USA, I spent Christmas in CA, which was several degrees warmer than normal for the season, people were surfing[0]; at the same time, the east coast of the US was several degrees colder than normal for the season, it was snowing[0]. > If you want to see it on a global scale, look at the oceans. It has been "steady" there, though not slow, https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ocean-heat/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ocean-heat/ Zettajoules without context is big and scary. But the Earth is an astronomical body and astronomical numbers are always big. 588 joules per square millimetre, sounds even scarier! But that doesn't tell me the depth over which the heat was added. But fortunately I don't need to guess at that, as the temperature is easier to measure directly: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ Using that heating figure and that energy figure, that's like heating a water planet by 0.85 C to a depth of about 370 m. [0] For all I know both these things happen every year at Christmas in the US, but it still felt very bizarre to me as an outsider, and that year did have opposite temperature anomalies on the east and west coasts.
- pantalaimon 4y ago
  It used to be a „future concern“ in the past, but due to the nature of time moving forward (and humanity not doing anything of significance to addresses the issue) that future is now.
rblatz 4y ago
I was surprised to see all the Hawaiian islands in some level of drought.
dekerta 4y ago
Windy.com has a neat feature that displays current drought conditions for the entire world: https://www.windy.com/-Drought-intensity-awp_0_40 https://www.windy.com/-Drought-intensity-awp_0_40
- StephenSmith 4y ago
  Why does this not line up well with the linked data, I wonder?
  - ninkendo 4y ago
    Looks like windy.com is showing short-term trends, perhaps driven by things like “how long since it last rained”, etc. Michigan is showing severe drought, and then you set the date to the 12th and it all clears to normal (there’s rain in the forecast around then.) It’s a lot different than the long term trends driven by total annual precipitation, snowpack, etc.
  - tony_cannistra 4y ago
    Windy.com uses the "INTERSUCHO" system from the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. Here's the paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/7/913 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/7/913 There's a website (it's in Czech): https://intersucho.cz/ https://intersucho.cz/ Windy.com, being developed in Europe, often uses European datasets.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Interesting that windy shows Cape Ann (Gloucester, MA area) as “no drought” and the unl site has the same area as “extreme drought”.
  - koheripbal 4y ago
    Yeah, both data sources are very suspect.
- kickout 4y ago
  windy is my favorite website. Absolutely loved it from day1. Wonder if anyone on that team is a HNer
nathanaldensr 4y ago
I love this site. Especially cool is the comparison slider, where you can compare drought assignments from two different times.
fasteddie31003 4y ago
I think there is some selection bias in maps like this because it has no data on above average rainfall. I know where I live we've had one of the rainiest summers ever but you won't see this on a map like this.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  The monitor seems problematic to me in all sorts of ways. As you say, there's no reference to above average rainfall. Also, it should be base-lining on the median result, not the average result. California has always had a few very wet and many dry years so the monitor usually shows drought. This serves developers and farmers who don't want to admit California is dry place and you should do projects taking a lot of water. And finally, the drought monitor measures dryness, not overall rainfall but it doesn't make this obvious. California's reservoirs are low but we have had fairly typical (median) rainfall for the last two years (and even had an usually humid spring and summer). The difference is increased heat increases evaporation and dryness and the map should make this distinction obvious.
  - richiebful1 4y ago
    It's better to go to the government agency site for the source data. They make it clear that the drought level is based on the availability of water compared to normal. https://www.drought.gov/data-maps-tools/us-drought-monitor https://www.drought.gov/data-maps-tools/us-drought-monitor
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      And the map isn’t generated for people to whine about growing alfalfa in California but to determine crop insurance rates &etc…
- simonsarris 4y ago
  Drought.gov actually keeps track of that! For example for New Hampshire: https://www.drought.gov/states/new-hampshire https://www.drought.gov/states/new-hampshire Scroll down to the graph, click "1895 - Present (Monthly)", and click the different levels of exceptional drought/exceptional wetness. You can see that NH has been trending wetter for the last 100 years (as with all the northeast), more or less the opposite of the southwestern US. Large periods of exceptional wet have happened in my life, with fewer big droughts than ever. (Alas, we're in a drought right now.) You can also see that California had some unusually wet periods in the 80's and 90's, which might have informed policy, but were simply an anomaly: https://www.drought.gov/states/california https://www.drought.gov/states/california
jseliger 4y ago
The gap between the drought monitor and the rejection of desalination plants seems notable: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-rejects-plan-desalination-plant-2022-05-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-reject....
- sologoub 4y ago
  It’s frankly appalling, but people are easy to manipulate with false promises of nearly free water efficiency and paint desalination as an expensive waste. LA county water districts are further busy cleaning recycled water enough to pump as potable, despite a pretty bad track record of keeping that water actually clean [1]. All the while saying residents are too incompetent to have access to normal recycled water at properly for irrigation because “someone will mess up and interconnect with potable”. Many engineers have pointed out that it’s a solved problem, and that backflow prevention devices are a thing and will prevent such issues at individual property meters. [1]https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-11/water-recycling-impaired-by-hyperion-sewage-disaster https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-11/water-re...
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    It's frankly appalling that the agriculture lobby has made people believe that California is anywhere near needing desalination or even frankly grey water for urban use. California residents use a very small amount of California's water, most is Ag, which is exported to the rest of the world. [0] So the idea that California is somehow shooting themselves in the foot (rather than refusing to further subsidize the Ag. industry which has done insane damage to the state's ecology) is severely misinformed. [0]https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/06_June/June2019_Item_12_Attach_2_PPICFactSheets.pdf https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/...
    - sologoub 4y ago
      The thing is, the less we take out of the environment, the more water is left for things like fish, birds, insects and so on. Desalination is not without environmental costs, but we are not considering all the externalities of diverting water from ecosystems either. Ag use is part of that water rights system that we need independence from. Desalination is one way for that independence. I’m sure there are other ways too.
sydd 4y ago
Whats up with the extreme drought in Hawaii? https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?fips_15009 https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...
- ac29 4y ago
  Just because it rains a lot in the tropics doesnt mean there cant be a drought. Fresh water supplies are often in short supply on islands, especially ones where there are lots of people.
gernb 4y ago
when does the water just run out? like is it possible say in 2 months or 14 months that there will be no water for millions of people? in particular in Southern California?
- delecti 4y ago
  Much of the southwest US is under very real risk of exactly that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_North_American_megadrought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_North_American_me...
- kickout 4y ago
  Still not quite 1930s dust bowl dry, but we're on the brink. Dangerous situation with no easy fixes either (other than telling California farmers they can't water)
- mellavora 4y ago
  So Cal running out of water might be more pleasant than the other possibility https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq0995 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq0995 Climate change is increasing the risk of a California megaflood
- kortilla 4y ago
  We’re not even close. Keep in mind the vast majority of water is still going to ag and industry. Residents are left fighting over like 15% of the total flow. There are far more voters who are residents than there are farmers. When things get desperate those farmers’ water rights in the CA constitution will get amended in a heartbeat.
- ericmcer 4y ago
  If these conditions continue we will be faced with a disasterous shortage of Almond Milk and Almond Butter
Aloha 4y ago
Its interesting how you can see how the large storms that came thru Arizona and Texas between the 16th and the 30th reduced drought over so much of that area.
doodlebugging 4y ago
The map looks to be pretty accurate if I consider my own location except that I should be in the Exceptional Drought instead of Extreme Drought category but recognizing that it is highly smoothed and can't show all the bumps, like my place, I can say it is pretty close. I have tracked and measured rainfall at my place for more than 20 years. So far this year we are still almost 2" (51 mm) below the lowest YTD rainfall total for this date in 20 years. In addition, we are almost 11" (279 mm) below the average YTD rainfall total for this date in the last 20 years. YTD Numbers from my worksheet for September 4 - Lowest since 2002 14.8" (376 mm); Average since 2002 23.8" (604 mm); Actual YTD 2022 for September 4 - 13" (330 mm) That's better off than we were 2 weeks ago though. The temperature had been >100F (>37.8C) for weeks and everything had dried out including established trees. My local rainfall totals showed almost 16" (406 mm) below the average YTD rainfall for the date during the last 20 years and more than 7.4" (188 mm) under the lowest YTD rainfall total for that date in the last 20 years. YTD Numbers from my worksheet for August 22 - Lowest since 2002 14.8" (376 mm); Average since 2002 23.1" (587 mm); Actual YTD 2022 for August 22 - 7.4" (188 mm) The lowest YTD totals before this year are from 2011. With temperatures ranging from 85F to 93F (29.4-33.9*C) since the first storm front came through it has been a huge contrast. I am letting everything that will still grow go to seed now. Migratory birds always stop by during the coldest days to eat the berries on the trees and perennials I have planted. Two weeks ago the plants were dormant and appeared dead. They have bloomed and it appears that I may have some set fruit before autumn shuts it all down in a few weeks.
- ijidak 4y ago
  Very interesting. Where are you located?
  - doodlebugging 4y ago
    North Texas, west of Fort Worth between there and Abilene. Where the west begins, LOL.
    - hedora 4y ago
      Lucky you. We have land near there. While it did rain this year and fill the tanks (man-made ponds the cows drink from, for coastal folks reading along), we lost most of our topsoil. I've never seen the mesquite / cedar trees and other plants so dead. We have a field for sunflowers that we rent out to dove hunters. The sunflowers are under a foot tall this year (which is unprecedented) so we can't rent it out. I guess the unprecedented wildfires this year also missed you.
baxtr 4y ago
Are they good pages for other countries or a global index? There is a good one for Germany: https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937 https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
It's fascinating watching the extreme conditions going on all over the world. I live in California and we have of course been getting drought and wildfires for a long time now, but I am noticing too that this is happening in many places. I just found this youtube channel talking about the droughts in China, and the story is remarkable. Low water levels means hydroelectric dams are shutting off, rolling blackouts during a massive heat wave. Feels like a story out of California, but this is happening all over China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_5CAMs_wkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_5CAMs_wkc There's the flooding in Bangladesh: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/22/bangladesh-floods-experts-say-climate-crisis-worsening-situation https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/22/bangladesh-floods-e... Heat waves in Europe are leading to thousands of excess deaths: https://www.politico.eu/article/excess-death-surged-heat-wave-hit-europe/ https://www.politico.eu/article/excess-death-surged-heat-wav... Global average temperature anomaly is now 0.85 C above pre-industrial levels. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ I noticed someone from the UK saying they had a heat wave in the 1970's, but then someone shared a plot of global temperature anomaly from back then and today. That summer there was a bit of an increase in the UK from that heat wave, but the rest of the world was more normal. Today, the increase is happening all over the world at once. I desperately hope that people get the message. It seems that maybe the tide is turning, but I know it is already so late, I hope we can act fast before we make things so much worse.
- akolbe 4y ago
  As for the UK, note also that the highest temperature during the 1976 heatwave in the UK was 35.9 °C. We've just had over 40 °C here – nearly 5 °C more, half a century later. 40 °C and 36 °C feel quite different.
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    Wow yeah I bet.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Curious that drought seems to respect political boundaries in many cases. Is that because political boundaries often respect geographic features? Or is reporting not uniform across those boundaries?
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  In what cases? I'm not seeing what you describe.
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    CA, NV for instance.
    - jjtheblunt 4y ago
      those comprise an adjoined geographical region of extreme desert, regardless of which band of professional politicians is in control at any current time.
      - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
        So, geographical feature in that case. Which coincides almost exactly with the political boundary.
- tcmart14 4y ago
  Yea, I don't get this comment. The places with the worst droughts according to the maps are often red areas. While California is overall "blue," it has more conservatives in the central parts of the state than probably the number of people in North Dakota and South Dakota combined. A lot of the more agricultural regions of California are heavily red. Now take a look at the South East, which is a "red" strong hold (maybe Georgia will change soon in upcoming elections). Yet the South East is mostly showing as not drought conditions. So I don't see where political barriers are coming from. Even looking at the state level. Sure, in aggregate, California is "blue." But Utah and Texas are "red." Yet they all have some elevated to serious drought conditions according to the map.
hyperrail 4y ago
Take note that the map is partly based on opinion: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/WhatistheUSDM.aspx https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/WhatistheUSDM.aspx > Who draws the map? > Several authors from the NDMC, NOAA and USDA create the map. They take turns, usually two weeks at a time. > How do they figure out where and how bad drought is? > This is what makes the U.S. Drought Monitor unique. It is not a statistical model, although numeric inputs are many: [...]
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
More interesting to me are the change maps that show if drought is getting better or worse over some period 12 months seems to be the max change range and it only goes back to July 2004, but cool to see! https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/ChangeMaps.aspx https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/ChangeMaps.aspx
echelon 4y ago
I appear to be in the one state with zero drought impact. This may be why people jumped me when I said lawns weren't all that bad. I didn't realize the scale of impact.
MKGoogle 4y ago
thegeekpirate 4y ago
Here's the Canadian drought map in case anyone's curious https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agriculture-and-environment/drought-watch-and-agroclimate/canadian-drought-monitor https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agriculture-and-environment...

195 points by pilingual 4y ago

Same for Germany: https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937 https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937

Drought.gov also has interesting graphs, historical context and descriptions of the various severity levels. https://www.drought.gov/states/california https://www.drought.gov/states/california

Waterluvian 4y ago

Very cool. A few comments (which probably need to be emailed to them and not just put here): 1. The main page map absolutely NEEDS a legend. 2. I wonder if any sort of drought map should also include the other half of the spectrum. Are are blank regions normal? Exceptionally wet? Flooding?

icegreentea2 4y ago
The linked page does have a legend just below the map. Look for "Intensity and Impacts".

matthewdgreen 4y ago

The consequences of global warming used to be a “future” concern. Starting to feel like that was extremely optimistic.

Guid_NewGuid 4y ago
Strong same. While 1 swallow doesn't make a summer the combination of 1/3rd of Pakistan being underwater plus heatwaves in Europe and blackouts in China with all the other stuff does get concerning. Maybe the 'establishment' causing scientists to only disclose the most conservative and defensible estimates misled us as to how fast and severe this thing would be. I caught myself getting frustrated the supermarket was out of instant coffee the other day and realized I'm in no way mentally prepared for what's coming.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  I think establishment science has talked about increased weather variability as a result of the slowing of the jetstream for a while. No one done a good job in saying "So a one degree increase overall can mean five or ten degrees increase hovering over a given area for weeks and that's devastating and deadly in many places, especially areas that have already pushed their ecology and infrastructure to the edge".
ben_w 4y ago
For me, yes and no at the same time. The average increase is slow, steady, and not too far from what I was expecting… but the geographic variation and the behaviour of the extremes is much stronger than I expected.
- mellavora 4y ago
  > The average increase is slow, steady, I'm not sure about that. This year is a significant uptick from 3 years ago where I live (central Europe). I did notice a slow warming since 2006 (when I moved to my current location), but even 2 years ago there were only a few summer nights where you could comfortably sit outside after dark without a jacket. It has been that warm every single night this summer. If you want to see it on a global scale, look at the oceans. It has been "steady" there, though not slow, https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ocean-heat/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ocean-heat/ And most of the heat (90%) has gone into the ocean. Now the oceans are warm, so we will see it on land. I'm expecting rapid acceleration over the next 10 years, not slow, and certainly not steady. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/01/extreme-heat-oceans-passed-point-of-no-return-high-temperatures-wildlife-seas https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/01/extreme-...
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > This year is a significant uptick from 3 years ago where I live Too short a time scale and too localised geographically to count as "average". First time I visited the USA, I spent Christmas in CA, which was several degrees warmer than normal for the season, people were surfing[0]; at the same time, the east coast of the US was several degrees colder than normal for the season, it was snowing[0]. > If you want to see it on a global scale, look at the oceans. It has been "steady" there, though not slow, https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ocean-heat/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ocean-heat/ Zettajoules without context is big and scary. But the Earth is an astronomical body and astronomical numbers are always big. 588 joules per square millimetre, sounds even scarier! But that doesn't tell me the depth over which the heat was added. But fortunately I don't need to guess at that, as the temperature is easier to measure directly: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ Using that heating figure and that energy figure, that's like heating a water planet by 0.85 C to a depth of about 370 m. [0] For all I know both these things happen every year at Christmas in the US, but it still felt very bizarre to me as an outsider, and that year did have opposite temperature anomalies on the east and west coasts.
pantalaimon 4y ago
It used to be a „future concern“ in the past, but due to the nature of time moving forward (and humanity not doing anything of significance to addresses the issue) that future is now.

rblatz 4y ago

I was surprised to see all the Hawaiian islands in some level of drought.

dekerta 4y ago

Windy.com has a neat feature that displays current drought conditions for the entire world: https://www.windy.com/-Drought-intensity-awp_0_40 https://www.windy.com/-Drought-intensity-awp_0_40

StephenSmith 4y ago
Why does this not line up well with the linked data, I wonder?
- ninkendo 4y ago
  Looks like windy.com is showing short-term trends, perhaps driven by things like “how long since it last rained”, etc. Michigan is showing severe drought, and then you set the date to the 12th and it all clears to normal (there’s rain in the forecast around then.) It’s a lot different than the long term trends driven by total annual precipitation, snowpack, etc.
- tony_cannistra 4y ago
  Windy.com uses the "INTERSUCHO" system from the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute. Here's the paper: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/7/913 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/12/7/913 There's a website (it's in Czech): https://intersucho.cz/ https://intersucho.cz/ Windy.com, being developed in Europe, often uses European datasets.
sokoloff 4y ago
Interesting that windy shows Cape Ann (Gloucester, MA area) as “no drought” and the unl site has the same area as “extreme drought”.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  Yeah, both data sources are very suspect.
kickout 4y ago
windy is my favorite website. Absolutely loved it from day1. Wonder if anyone on that team is a HNer

nathanaldensr 4y ago

I love this site. Especially cool is the comparison slider, where you can compare drought assignments from two different times.

fasteddie31003 4y ago

I think there is some selection bias in maps like this because it has no data on above average rainfall. I know where I live we've had one of the rainiest summers ever but you won't see this on a map like this.

joe_the_user 4y ago
The monitor seems problematic to me in all sorts of ways. As you say, there's no reference to above average rainfall. Also, it should be base-lining on the median result, not the average result. California has always had a few very wet and many dry years so the monitor usually shows drought. This serves developers and farmers who don't want to admit California is dry place and you should do projects taking a lot of water. And finally, the drought monitor measures dryness, not overall rainfall but it doesn't make this obvious. California's reservoirs are low but we have had fairly typical (median) rainfall for the last two years (and even had an usually humid spring and summer). The difference is increased heat increases evaporation and dryness and the map should make this distinction obvious.
- richiebful1 4y ago
  It's better to go to the government agency site for the source data. They make it clear that the drought level is based on the availability of water compared to normal. https://www.drought.gov/data-maps-tools/us-drought-monitor https://www.drought.gov/data-maps-tools/us-drought-monitor
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    And the map isn’t generated for people to whine about growing alfalfa in California but to determine crop insurance rates &etc…
simonsarris 4y ago
Drought.gov actually keeps track of that! For example for New Hampshire: https://www.drought.gov/states/new-hampshire https://www.drought.gov/states/new-hampshire Scroll down to the graph, click "1895 - Present (Monthly)", and click the different levels of exceptional drought/exceptional wetness. You can see that NH has been trending wetter for the last 100 years (as with all the northeast), more or less the opposite of the southwestern US. Large periods of exceptional wet have happened in my life, with fewer big droughts than ever. (Alas, we're in a drought right now.) You can also see that California had some unusually wet periods in the 80's and 90's, which might have informed policy, but were simply an anomaly: https://www.drought.gov/states/california https://www.drought.gov/states/california

jseliger 4y ago

The gap between the drought monitor and the rejection of desalination plants seems notable: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-rejects-plan-desalination-plant-2022-05-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/california-regulator-reject....

sologoub 4y ago
It’s frankly appalling, but people are easy to manipulate with false promises of nearly free water efficiency and paint desalination as an expensive waste. LA county water districts are further busy cleaning recycled water enough to pump as potable, despite a pretty bad track record of keeping that water actually clean [1]. All the while saying residents are too incompetent to have access to normal recycled water at properly for irrigation because “someone will mess up and interconnect with potable”. Many engineers have pointed out that it’s a solved problem, and that backflow prevention devices are a thing and will prevent such issues at individual property meters. [1]https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-11/water-recycling-impaired-by-hyperion-sewage-disaster https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-11/water-re...
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  It's frankly appalling that the agriculture lobby has made people believe that California is anywhere near needing desalination or even frankly grey water for urban use. California residents use a very small amount of California's water, most is Ag, which is exported to the rest of the world. [0] So the idea that California is somehow shooting themselves in the foot (rather than refusing to further subsidize the Ag. industry which has done insane damage to the state's ecology) is severely misinformed. [0]https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/06_June/June2019_Item_12_Attach_2_PPICFactSheets.pdf https://cwc.ca.gov/-/media/CWC-Website/Files/Documents/2019/...
  - sologoub 4y ago
    The thing is, the less we take out of the environment, the more water is left for things like fish, birds, insects and so on. Desalination is not without environmental costs, but we are not considering all the externalities of diverting water from ecosystems either. Ag use is part of that water rights system that we need independence from. Desalination is one way for that independence. I’m sure there are other ways too.

sydd 4y ago

Whats up with the extreme drought in Hawaii? https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?fips_15009 https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...

ac29 4y ago
Just because it rains a lot in the tropics doesnt mean there cant be a drought. Fresh water supplies are often in short supply on islands, especially ones where there are lots of people.

gernb 4y ago

when does the water just run out? like is it possible say in 2 months or 14 months that there will be no water for millions of people? in particular in Southern California?

delecti 4y ago
Much of the southwest US is under very real risk of exactly that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_North_American_megadrought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_North_American_me...
kickout 4y ago
Still not quite 1930s dust bowl dry, but we're on the brink. Dangerous situation with no easy fixes either (other than telling California farmers they can't water)
mellavora 4y ago
So Cal running out of water might be more pleasant than the other possibility https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq0995 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abq0995 Climate change is increasing the risk of a California megaflood
kortilla 4y ago
We’re not even close. Keep in mind the vast majority of water is still going to ag and industry. Residents are left fighting over like 15% of the total flow. There are far more voters who are residents than there are farmers. When things get desperate those farmers’ water rights in the CA constitution will get amended in a heartbeat.
ericmcer 4y ago
If these conditions continue we will be faced with a disasterous shortage of Almond Milk and Almond Butter

Aloha 4y ago

Its interesting how you can see how the large storms that came thru Arizona and Texas between the 16th and the 30th reduced drought over so much of that area.

doodlebugging 4y ago

The map looks to be pretty accurate if I consider my own location except that I should be in the Exceptional Drought instead of Extreme Drought category but recognizing that it is highly smoothed and can't show all the bumps, like my place, I can say it is pretty close. I have tracked and measured rainfall at my place for more than 20 years. So far this year we are still almost 2" (51 mm) below the lowest YTD rainfall total for this date in 20 years. In addition, we are almost 11" (279 mm) below the average YTD rainfall total for this date in the last 20 years. YTD Numbers from my worksheet for September 4 - Lowest since 2002 14.8" (376 mm); Average since 2002 23.8" (604 mm); Actual YTD 2022 for September 4 - 13" (330 mm) That's better off than we were 2 weeks ago though. The temperature had been >100F (>37.8C) for weeks and everything had dried out including established trees. My local rainfall totals showed almost 16" (406 mm) below the average YTD rainfall for the date during the last 20 years and more than 7.4" (188 mm) under the lowest YTD rainfall total for that date in the last 20 years. YTD Numbers from my worksheet for August 22 - Lowest since 2002 14.8" (376 mm); Average since 2002 23.1" (587 mm); Actual YTD 2022 for August 22 - 7.4" (188 mm) The lowest YTD totals before this year are from 2011. With temperatures ranging from 85F to 93F (29.4-33.9*C) since the first storm front came through it has been a huge contrast. I am letting everything that will still grow go to seed now. Migratory birds always stop by during the coldest days to eat the berries on the trees and perennials I have planted. Two weeks ago the plants were dormant and appeared dead. They have bloomed and it appears that I may have some set fruit before autumn shuts it all down in a few weeks.

ijidak 4y ago
Very interesting. Where are you located?
- doodlebugging 4y ago
  North Texas, west of Fort Worth between there and Abilene. Where the west begins, LOL.
  - hedora 4y ago
    Lucky you. We have land near there. While it did rain this year and fill the tanks (man-made ponds the cows drink from, for coastal folks reading along), we lost most of our topsoil. I've never seen the mesquite / cedar trees and other plants so dead. We have a field for sunflowers that we rent out to dove hunters. The sunflowers are under a foot tall this year (which is unprecedented) so we can't rent it out. I guess the unprecedented wildfires this year also missed you.

baxtr 4y ago

Are they good pages for other countries or a global index? There is a good one for Germany: https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937 https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=37937

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

It's fascinating watching the extreme conditions going on all over the world. I live in California and we have of course been getting drought and wildfires for a long time now, but I am noticing too that this is happening in many places. I just found this youtube channel talking about the droughts in China, and the story is remarkable. Low water levels means hydroelectric dams are shutting off, rolling blackouts during a massive heat wave. Feels like a story out of California, but this is happening all over China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_5CAMs_wkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_5CAMs_wkc There's the flooding in Bangladesh: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/22/bangladesh-floods-experts-say-climate-crisis-worsening-situation https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/22/bangladesh-floods-e... Heat waves in Europe are leading to thousands of excess deaths: https://www.politico.eu/article/excess-death-surged-heat-wave-hit-europe/ https://www.politico.eu/article/excess-death-surged-heat-wav... Global average temperature anomaly is now 0.85 C above pre-industrial levels. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ I noticed someone from the UK saying they had a heat wave in the 1970's, but then someone shared a plot of global temperature anomaly from back then and today. That summer there was a bit of an increase in the UK from that heat wave, but the rest of the world was more normal. Today, the increase is happening all over the world at once. I desperately hope that people get the message. It seems that maybe the tide is turning, but I know it is already so late, I hope we can act fast before we make things so much worse.

akolbe 4y ago
As for the UK, note also that the highest temperature during the 1976 heatwave in the UK was 35.9 °C. We've just had over 40 °C here – nearly 5 °C more, half a century later. 40 °C and 36 °C feel quite different.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Wow yeah I bet.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Curious that drought seems to respect political boundaries in many cases. Is that because political boundaries often respect geographic features? Or is reporting not uniform across those boundaries?

jjtheblunt 4y ago
In what cases? I'm not seeing what you describe.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  CA, NV for instance.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    those comprise an adjoined geographical region of extreme desert, regardless of which band of professional politicians is in control at any current time.
    - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
      So, geographical feature in that case. Which coincides almost exactly with the political boundary.
tcmart14 4y ago
Yea, I don't get this comment. The places with the worst droughts according to the maps are often red areas. While California is overall "blue," it has more conservatives in the central parts of the state than probably the number of people in North Dakota and South Dakota combined. A lot of the more agricultural regions of California are heavily red. Now take a look at the South East, which is a "red" strong hold (maybe Georgia will change soon in upcoming elections). Yet the South East is mostly showing as not drought conditions. So I don't see where political barriers are coming from. Even looking at the state level. Sure, in aggregate, California is "blue." But Utah and Texas are "red." Yet they all have some elevated to serious drought conditions according to the map.

hyperrail 4y ago

Take note that the map is partly based on opinion: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/WhatistheUSDM.aspx https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/WhatistheUSDM.aspx > Who draws the map? > Several authors from the NDMC, NOAA and USDA create the map. They take turns, usually two weeks at a time. > How do they figure out where and how bad drought is? > This is what makes the U.S. Drought Monitor unique. It is not a statistical model, although numeric inputs are many: [...]

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

More interesting to me are the change maps that show if drought is getting better or worse over some period 12 months seems to be the max change range and it only goes back to July 2004, but cool to see! https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/ChangeMaps.aspx https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/ChangeMaps.aspx

echelon 4y ago

I appear to be in the one state with zero drought impact. This may be why people jumped me when I said lawns weren't all that bad. I didn't realize the scale of impact.

MKGoogle 4y ago

thegeekpirate 4y ago

Here's the Canadian drought map in case anyone's curious https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agriculture-and-environment/drought-watch-and-agroclimate/canadian-drought-monitor https://agriculture.canada.ca/en/agriculture-and-environment...