More than sixty percent of the United States is experiencing drought conditions
news.vt.edu
news.vt.edu
The article mentions the potential for a super El Nino at the very end but doesn't discuss the effect it could have on content in the map should it go down as modeled. I suspect that a lot of yellows and red will disappear or shift to the north.
I know that the last super El Nino in 2015-2016 followed similar drought conditions due to La Nina such that rainfall at my property, which is normally ~36" (91.4 cm) annually (that's a 20 year average taken here on my property) was below average for the period 2010-2014 by 3-5" (7.62-12.7 cm) and up to 10" (25.4 cm) in 2014. Once La Nina faded it began to rain in August and rained out through December and we ended the year with 68" (172.7 cm) rainfall. In the decades that I have lived here and tracked rainfall that is the wettest year by more than 14" (35.6 cm).
We are currently behind the curve here but I have faith in their predictions since it also comes with a promise of ridiculously hot temperatures to make the last months of the year humid well past normal. It has been cooler than normal so far and drier than normal (La Nina hanging on by a thread). The script will flip and N Texas will again be a miserable place to be if you work outside.
If you go from a drought to a lot of water it generally builds up pretty badly as dried out dirt doesn't absorb water very well.
If the prediction holds true it may become a year with a lot of water damage/flooding in these regions.
Let's hope for the best though.
There won't be much we can do about soil absorption since keeping your yard watered will also cause runoff if the soil is saturated.
We just need to follow the common sense guidance to avoid driving into flooded underpasses and do not drive past barriers. Remember that at night it will be difficult to spot flooded sections of highway due to reflections so you will be dependent on center lines and painted markings and if they disappear it could indicate water depth sufficient to obscure them. Hydroplaning is a serious concern so drive more slowly and remember that if you begin to hydroplane you need to keep your wheels pointed in the direction that you need to travel and let off of the accelerator. The pooled water and sudden decrease in speed will put your tires back on the road surface so your vehicle will zip off in the direction that it is pointing. Check your tread depth before autumn and replace your tires if they are worn.
Carry a rain slicker or poncho with you in case traffic conditions force you to stop due to accidents or water across the roadway. You'll be a lot more comfortable dry than wet.
I intentionally bought property with a house that is on a hill with drainage away from the house so flooding isn't something that I worry about. I know that most other people will have to deal with flooding, especially around here where there are so many new construction issues - new concrete driveways, asphalt streets, and channelized creeks. Places that have never flooded in the past could flood now due to loss of open ground to home construction.
I am a couple decades into restoring my place to native prairie grasses, wildflowers, and trees so my place manages rainfall as it always has. I don't have much soil to absorb the rainfall though since I live on a limestone outcrop with poorly developed soils.
I hope people around here will follow guidance and be safe and use common sense when the rains come. I'm ready with my 4x4s to drag them out of their situations if they need a hand though.
Add a pair of rubber boots and a walking stick. The latter both to check the depth of water, and to brace yourself when there's bad footing or flowing water.
There is literally nothing you can do about it. Watering your lawn does not impact that issue whatsoever, you'd have to continuously water your whole region.
the effect I was talking about is worth checking out if you're interested - it's usually described as "hydrophobic earth from drought" and similarly. No meaningful way to utilize that knowledge beyond being aware that regional droughts inevitably make floods worse.
The difference is not enough at a single plots area - that's why I'm saying watering your lawn doesn't matter, but the effect is massive when a drought takes place because suddenly the whole area absorbs less water
Thanks for this clarification for anyone reading. I had intended to say that a drought creates a regional problem in my earlier reply but got lost in the process. Using a highly local example anecdote was dumb. I'm a geoscientist so I understand how the sediment wetting process works but that doesn't mean that I can always easily explain it to someone else.
There are many things that affect wettability and soil absorption and most of them relate to the soil type in the area and they can be hyperlocal effects. I was constructing a hugelculture orchard here on my place a few years back. That involves layering organic materials into mounds that, as they decompose, the decomposition of the organics (logs, small limbs, leaves, green grass, etc) builds a soil that holds water so that the plants that are planted require less frequent watering. One of the components is supposed to be topsoil. You will plant your trees, vegetables, etc into the topsoil and they will grow strong on the decomposition of all that other stuff.
I live on a limestone outcrop. My deepest "topsoil" is under one foot deep and it varies greatly so that there are spots with zero topsoil. I had to buy some from a local supplier. That turned out to be a mistake. The product they delivered was riverbed silt, a very fine-grained shaley sediment with zero sand and zero organic matter. It was impossible to water anything that had been planted directly in that silt. The water beaded up and rolled downhill almost as fast as it could be sprayed. I did not know that this crappy dirt was worthless until I had spread more than half of it in an internal layer on the pile. Removing it was impossible. I capped the mound with that silt and planted my plants in the thin soil at the base of the mound since that is where all the water would end up anyway. It was three years before grass would grow on the mound and only then because I had heavily mulched the mound with wheat straw and worked it in.
I understand the point you were making and thank you for making it more clear for anyone on this thread.
[0]https://www.spaceweather.com/images2026/13may26/feart-11-120...
Just an fyi, precipitation is usually measured in mm. There is no need for the decimal point in your conversions.
Unfortunately, what I wanted to know also changed, in that I now use the site to keep tabs on the thoughts of folks are or who fund and work for hard-right technocrats.
There are, of course, many other folks on the site.
At the same time, the US techno-fascists both have an outsized influence on our lives and it's much harder to find their voices in other places: folks who, for instance, think Peter Thiel is of course quite sane and probably not trying to figure out a way to kill vast chunks of us off (and that it would be a reasonable thing if he were).
You think critics of Thiel are the techno fascists?
This is a more recent turn, and one that happened later than in other online social spaces. Claiming that HN leans in a direction friendly to tech VC is hardly controversial.
Neither is not jumping on the latest popular bandwagon a show of support in the opposite direction.
Big Tech social media are perfect platforms to drive people and society apart. Yesterday suddenly Youtube passed a vid [0] through the algorithmic filter bubble they feed me, showing Marco Rubio (or a deepfake version?) spew divisive misinfo about Macron and France. Most telling that none of the comments had a critical word on Rubio. Only Rubio fan comments behing highly critical of Europe and the EU.
Big Tech social media is pure poison to healthy society in how it insidiously spreads misinformation and propaganda to targeted audiences.
[0] No URL. I don't want to give this clicks, but the shorts vid ID is pgvVw5bZWiA
Real question is how will next years crop handle the supply constrains due to the Straight (outta) Hormuz lock down.
USDA Projects Smallest US Wheat Harvest Since 1972 Due to Plains Drought - https://www.agweb.com/news/usda-projects-smallest-us-wheat-h...
Wheat Acreage Continues Decline as Producers Find More Lucrative Crops - https://www.proag.com/news/wheat-acreage-continues-decline-a...
/s for anyone who doesn’t understand the mockery
In what way? Wheat hasn't even returned to early 2025 price levels yet. It is up relative to where is has been recently amid what were very low prices, but still have a long way to go to get where things had been through much of the 2020s.
The areas of extreme drought may change each year, but the total area affected seems rather ordinary to me.
The US southwest is now in the longest period of severe drought in at least 1200 years.
Nearly every long term trend and statistics shows climate and environmental conditions getting worse, and it's almost solely due to human activity.
Cherry picking short term events isn't useful, especially when the climate getting worse often means an increase in the duration between normal events and an increase in extreme weather.
We are also refusing to maintain critical water-system infrastructure, setting ourselves up to lose critical water storage capacity [1].
We can get fined for washing our cars at certain times (although it's rarely enforced), but nobody ever turns the screws on the business machine.
[1] https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/north-county/plan-f...
Agriculture and city replacing trees wiped out the Mayans: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2012/08/20/forest-razing-b...
Tree loss being a 60% contributing factor to the Mayan case. When the Mayans ran out of water, their civilization collapsed, and their technology and advanced astronomical science faded from memory.
We are speed running toward the same peril in modern times.
https://www.cbs17.com/news/local-news/wake-county-news/these...
When I think of a real plant-a-tree project, I think of replacing tree canopies to historic levels.
My prediction hasn't come true because we are still seeing net reductions in tree canopy.
I'm not trying to take the stance that there's no problem. I think we should spend far more resources, time, and education on the importance of nature. I was just pointing out that urban forestry has been a thing for awhile. The two unfortunate sides to it, at least if you ignore all the rest of modern infrastructure, is that one, there's only so much space you have to add more trees in urban areas, and two, it's treated more as a necessity which has a lower-bound to reach than an ongoing project to improve.
So, succinctly, we should plant more trees. :)
Side note: it's unfortunate that the news article doesn't link to the report, as far as I can tell. I believe it's referencing this: https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wakegov.com.if-us-west-1/...
USDA Projects Smallest US Wheat Harvest Since 1972 Due to Plains Drought
Now it snows, melts, gets cold, repeats and we don't really get any build up except maybe a big storm leaving enough for a week or two.
Always interested to see how creative people can be in trying to fit the undefinable and uncontrollable world into a narrative box.
https://abc7.com/post/california-has-zero-areas-dryness-firs...
California is like 5% of the land mass of the contiguous 48 states.
Just because it is out of a drought doesn't negate the article.
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/About/WhatistheUSDM.aspx
> Who draws the map?
> Meteorologists and climatologists from the NDMC, NOAA and USDA take turns as the lead author of the map, usually two weeks a time. The author’s job is to do something that a computer can’t. When the data is pointing in different directions, they make sense out of it.
> How do we know when we're in a drought?
> No single piece of evidence tells the full story, and neither do strictly physical indicators. That’s why the USDM isn’t a statistical model
> [Authors] bring together the physical climate, weather and hydrology data and reconcile that with local expert feedback, impact reports and conditions observations. The author is also responsible for weighing different indicators based on what’s most appropriate for a particular place and time of year. In the West, for example, winter snowpack has a stronger bearing on water supplies than in the East
https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2022/04/is-large-portion-of-w...
> The essential message is that weather and climate data do not support the claims of extreme or severe drought in eastern Washington this year.
> There is no expectation of water problems over or near the Columbia Basin. The Drought Monitor graphics, which are created subjectively, are sufficiently problematic and deficient that they should not be considered or applied to any serious decision making.
Cliff in an expert, he worked in the Obama administration on climate, and unsurprisingly, he is being cited for having opinions the support the thesis of the article.
anyway if anything it would probably be poisoning the well. really though it's just pointing out that cliff isn't a garden variety climate scientist and comes with something like a warning label.
Basically it’s complicated. Some areas did experience extreme droughts that year and others faired well.
BPA was able to lever up their reserves early due to those same forecasts which allowed them excess supply to sell when other utilities experienced extreme heat (drought) and couldn’t produce enough.
> Notably, Bonneville was able to offer much needed support to other Pacific Northwest and California utilities during late-summer heatwaves and scarcity events. Our hydropower operations planners and traders positioned the power system to maximize supply, enabling us to deliver significant amounts of power across the West to help keep the lights on during a string of energy emergencies.
https://www.bpa.gov/-/media/Aep/finance/annual-reports/ar202...
I was just surprised at how subjective their work was, with differing opinions regarding the big picture depending on whom you asked and what their background was, as in university, whether they had worked for the navy or whether they had worked for the government.
The big surprise of the gambling mentality reminded me of people that dedicate their lives to losing as much money as possible betting on horses. These people know the form, the weather and so much, yet they do their own bets.
It was kind of the same when working out what the weather would be in Springfield tomorrow. Would it just be cloudy or actual rain? That would be a 'bet'.
The next day the observations would come in and the meteorologists would either win or lose their 'bet'. The guy who has been to Springfield and knows the local geography well would have his own reasons for his 'bet', whereas the guy who was more interested in long term storm development would have another rationale for his 'bet'.
Then there would be 'wrong all the time me', able to look at the low level cloud from contrails (which are really huge in some wavelengths on the satellite pictures) to assume rain every day.
Hence climate and weather is highly subjective even if it is highly educated and vastly experienced professionals that are interpreting the data.
This was right before GPU compute started to become a big thing, I do wonder if they now use machine learning models on these to speed up model iteration? I would hope so, but even then there is the human factor as you said. Eventually someone has to make the call on what the data shows and how to present it to the world.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/the-us-weather-model... (2016) {hard to believe this one is 10 years old}
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/11/googles-new-weather-... (2025)
Also, there just isn't a more objective measure of drought out there, let alone a fully objective measure.
Also also, it's unclear to me that this black box is being gamed any harder than most other black boxes in our system. If you want to game agriculture, you game the farm bill.