With nearly two-thirds of the United States abnormally dry or worse, the government’s forecast for spring offers little hope for relief, especially in the West, where a devastating megadrought has taken root and worsened.
Meteorological and agricultural officials warned of possible cuts in water use in California and the southwest, increased forest fires, low levels in major reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell and damage to wheat crops.
Official Spring Outlook for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Thursday sees an expanding drought with April, May and June drier than normal in much of the country, from Louisiana to Oregon. including some areas most affected by the most severe drought. And almost the entire continental United States appears to have a hotter-than-normal spring, except for small parts of the Pacific Northwest and southeast Alaska, which makes the drought even worse.
“We are predicting a prolonged and widespread drought,” said Deputy Director of the National Weather Service, Mary Erickson. “It is definitely something that we are looking at and that we are very concerned about.”
NOAA expects the spring drought to reach 74 million people.
Several factors contribute to the worsening drought, the agency said. A cooling La Niña of parts of the central Pacific continues to bring dry weather to much of the country, while in the southwest the heavy monsoon rains have not materialized. Meteorologists also say that California’s megadrought is associated with long-term climate change.
Thursday’s national drought monitor shows that almost 66% of the nation is in an abnormally dry condition, the highest level in mid-March since 2002. And meteorologists predict that it will get worse, expanding into parts of Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota, with small islands of relief in parts of the Great Lakes and New England.
More than 44% of the nation is in moderate or worse drought, and almost 18% is in extreme or exceptional drought – all west of the Mississippi River. Climate scientists are calling what’s happening in the West “megadrought” that started in 1999.
“The drought that strikes almost the entire west is already quite severe in its breadth and intensity and, unfortunately, there is unlikely to be much relief this spring,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who writes the Weather West blog and does it is not part of the NOAA perspective. “Winter rainfall has been well below average in much of California, and summer rainfall has reached record low levels in 2020 across the southwestern desert.”
With snow accumulated in Sierra Nevada at just 60% of normal levels, United States Department of Agriculture meteorologist Brad Rippey said “there will be some water cuts and allocation cuts in California and perhaps other areas in the southwest” to agriculture and other uses. It will likely hit nut harvests in the Golden State.
Winter and spring wheat crops have also been hit hard by drought in the west, with 78% of the spring wheat production area in drought conditions, said Rippey.
The hot and dry conditions of the coming months are likely to bring “an intensified forest fire season,” said Jon Gottschalck, head of NOAA’s forecasting business.
UCLA’s Swain said the fires are unlikely to be as bad as in 2020 because a lot of vegetation has already been burned and drought conditions have slowed growth. Last year, he said, forest fires were so big that they will be difficult to overcome, although this season of fires is likely to be above average.
Drought and heat create a vicious cycle. When it is dry, less energy from the sun goes to evaporate moisture from the soil, because it is not so humid, Swain said. This leaves more energy to heat the air, and the heat worsens the drought by increasing evaporation.
“In the west, it is clear that climate change has raised temperatures essentially throughout the year, which has reduced snow accumulation in the mountains and increased evaporation – substantially worsening the severity of ongoing drought conditions,” he said.
In the next week or two, parts of the central United States may have pockets of heavy rain, but the question is whether that will be enough to make up for last year’s large plains of rainfall in the plains, Nebraska climatologist Martha Shulski said.
The flip side of the drought is that, for the first time in three years, NOAA is projecting no major floods in the spring, with smaller amounts of smaller and moderate floods.
About 82 million people will be at risk of flooding this spring, most of them less serious, without material damage. That’s a drop of 128 million people last year.
Floods tend to be an expensive localized short-term problem, while drought and forest fires reach larger areas and last longer, said climatologist Karin Gleason of NOAA.
Since 1980, NOAA has been tracking climate disasters that caused at least $ 1 billion in damage. The 28 droughts caused nearly $ 259 billion in damage, while the 33 floods cost about $ 151 billion.
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