More than sixty percent of the United States is experiencing drought conditions

Some odd comments on this. It's not a matter of debate, wheat futures reflect this.

I occasionally check out the map on the drought monitor website. The current map does not look significantly different than maps I have seen over the past 10 years.

The areas of extreme drought may change each year, but the total area affected seems rather ordinary to me.

The drought map used here is partly subjective opinion.

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

Dry here (southern IL). 12 years ago spring would be cool, drizzly, cloudy. Now (past 3 years) it's warm, dry, sunny. Periodically we get this big wind that lasts for a couple days.

I hope people will not buy into that weird conspiracy theory about the destroyed weather radars in Iraq and its consequences

Title is somewhat incorrect: more than 60% of the U.S. is facing drought, making it overall the worst in decades. The data do not show that the drought in each area is the worst in decades.

Whether or not it's true, this is going to be great fodder for the people who believe AI is using up all the water.

In some places not strictly in drought the water cycle is still completely messed up. A few huge winter storms make up for lack of precipitation in the rest of the year and then promptly melts off. So the yearly average looks good on paper but it's dry as hell in summer/fire season with no snowmelt throughout the year.

Just a reminder from January: "California completely drought-free for 1st time in 25 years after winter storms"

https://abc7.com/post/california-has-zero-areas-dryness-firs...