Drought Status
Drought Status
Drought Status
The Arizona Drought Monitoring Technical Committee confers weekly to advise the U.S. Drought Monitor authors on the current drought conditions in Arizona, and makes recommendations about the position of the drought boundaries for Arizona. The U.S. Drought Monitor is the official record of drought for Federal drought relief claims. Information used by the MTC in advising the Drought Monitor authors includes numerous drought indices, precipitation and stream flow data, and impacts data. Every Thursday, the Drought Status web page automatically updates with the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map of Arizona.
Monthly Drought Status Summary: OCTOBER 2019
A storm at the end of September improved conditions in western Maricopa and Pima counties and eastern Yuma and La Paz counties. However, October was very dry across the state and isolated rainfall from three storms during this month was not enough to improve drought conditions in other areas.
The dryness led to a Severe Drought (D2) expansion from 26% to 40% during the month across northern Arizona and into Greenlee, southern Apache and Navajo counties. Meanwhile, the area of the state in No Drought expanded from 5% to 8% across southwestern Arizona due to the September tropical storm moisture.
With no current signs of El Niño or La Niña developing in the Pacific, neutral conditions are favored through the winter. However, climate models suggest some tendency for drier than normal conditions later in the winter.
At the end of each month, the MTC produces the web-based, short-term drought status update based on U.S. Drought Monitor's maps for the past four weeks. An email with the latest map and summary is sent to interested parties.
Quarterly Drought Status Update: July - September 2019
The monsoon activity began late in the summer with some heavy rainfall events, but they were highly localized, and precipitation was below average for most locations.
The dry conditions in July and August continued in September reversing the long-term drought improvements last quarter after the extremely wet winter and relatively wet spring. This led to a significant degradation in long-term drought conditions and the expansion of Moderate (D1), Severe (D2) and Extreme Drought (D3), particularly in the northern two-thirds of the state.
Cochise, western Maricopa and eastern Yavapai counties had above average monsoon rainfall and saw little degradation in long-term drought conditions.
Without an El Niño or La Niña signature in the Pacific, there is little climate signal suggesting any tendency for above or below normal precipitation heading towards the fall and early winter season.
This report was prepared by the Arizona Drought Monitoring Technical Committee, October 4, 2019. Arizona's long-term drought status map is updated quarterly and the next update in early January will reflect the conditions of October, November and December. The long-term drought status for each watershed is determined by comparing the precipitation and streamflow percentiles for the past 24, 36 and 48 months to a 40-year historical record.