Arizona drought conditions improving
Drought has been a repeating seasonal issue in Arizona for years and has had an impact on everything from agriculture and tourism, to energy production and transportation in the Valley. For those who don’t know, a drought is an extended period of deficient rainfall relative to the statistical multi-year average for a region.
Thankfully, the latest report issued Thursday, January 28th by the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, shows nearly forty-three percent of Arizona is no longer experiencing any form of broad-scale drought. About forty-one percent of the state is still marked at the center’s first level according to the recent report. That first level, coded as “D0 – Abnormally Dry,” and just sixteen percent is in the next level, coded as “D1 – Moderate Drought.”
“It’s been a very unremarkable, gradual improvement over several months,” said Mark Svoboda, the report’s author and climate-based monitoring program area leader at the National Drought Mitigation Center. This comes as good news across the Valley of the Sun especially since this time last year three percent of the state was in extreme drought with eighty percent of Arizona being in severe to moderate drought.
The most notable change was in Apache County, eastern Coconino County and Southeast Yavapai County, all of which went from abnormally dry to no drought classification in the last two weeks. Svoboda attributes the changes in drought levels to a favorable monsoon and winter. If you want to track Arizona’s drought status and rainfall or check out the Arizona Drought Preparedness Plan, please visit azwater.gov.
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