When we think about the worsening drought across our area, we typically think about the fact that we have not had much rain. It's not just precipitation, though, that determines if we are in a drought. Let's dive into how the drought monitor is created and why it takes so many different moving pieces.
Collecting physical data is important to understanding a piece of this puzzle. The National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln looks at precipitation, streamflow, reservoir levels, evaporative demand, soil moisture and vegetation health.
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Streamflow looks at how much water and how quickly water is moving through various rivers and streams. Reservoir levels tell us how much water is stored in various man-made bodies of waters.
Evaporative demand looks at the "thirst" of the atmosphere and how much water vapor will be evaporated from land and vegetation. Vegetation health, according to NASA, is measured by looking at how much visible and near-infrared sunlight is absorbed by plants.
It's important to have multiple different pieces of physical data over various lengths of time to know how our environment is changing over time, but we also need to know how the drought is directly impacting an area. The National Drought Mitigation Center looks at both the physical data and drought impacts as well as information from local experts in order to to determine the drought category.
New drought monitors are released every Thursday, and they provide this information to multiple government agencies, including the USDA and the IRS top determine funding, tax and disaster declarations. You can find the latest drought monitor information in the weather story.
