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<\/div>\nDrought in the contiguous United States has reached record levels for this time of year, weather data shows. Meteorologists said it\u2019s a bad sign for the upcoming wildfire season, food prices and western water issues.<\/p>\n
More than 61% of the Lower 48 states is in moderate to exceptional drought \u2014 including 97% of the Southeast and two-thirds of the West \u2014 according to the U.S. Drought Monitor<\/a>. It\u2019s the highest levels for this time of year since the drought monitor began in 2000.<\/p>\n The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s comprehensive Palmer Drought Severity Index<\/a> not only hit its highest level for March since records started in 1895, but last month was the third-driest month recorded regardless of time of year. It trailed only the famed Dust Bowl months of July and August 1934.<\/p>\n Because of record heat, much of the West has had exceptionally low levels of snow in the first few months of the year, which is usually how the region stores water for the summer. A different drought \u2014 connected to the jet stream keeping storms further north \u2014 has put the South from Texas all the way to the East Coast into a separate drought that just happens to coincide with what\u2019s going on in the West, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center.<\/p>\n It would take 19 inches of rain in one month to break the drought in eastern Texas and more than a foot of rain to solve the deficit for most of the Southeast, NOAA calculated.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cRight now 61% of the country is in drought and that\u2019s steadily been going up for the calendar year,\u201d Fuchs said. \u201cWe just haven\u2019t seen too many springs where this amount of the country has been in this kind of shape.\u201d<\/p>\n Sticking out like a sore thumb is a highly technical but crucial measurement of \u201cthe sponginess\u201d of the atmosphere \u2014 or how much moisture the hot, dry air is sucking up from the land it\u2019s baking. It\u2019s called vapor pressure deficit. It\u2019s 77% above normal and more than 25% higher than the previous record for January through March in the West, said UCLA hydroclimatologist Park Williams.<\/p>\n That level of moisture-sucking from the ground \u201cwouldn\u2019t have appeared possible\u201d before now, Williams said.<\/p>\n Drought usually peaks in summer, not spring, and that\u2019s what worries meteorologists.<\/p>\n \u201cFire tends to respond to heat and drought in an exponential manner,\u201d Williams said. \u201cFor each degree of warming, you get a bigger bang in terms of fire than you got from the previous degree of warming.\u201d<\/p>\n In Arizona, cacti are blooming months early and the worry about water has already started, said Kathy Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona.<\/p>\n \u201cThose of us who are dependent on the Colorado River, of course, are very concerned about the fact that we don\u2019t have a negotiated path forward in the middle of what appears to be possibly the worst year of drought that we\u2019ve all experienced,\u201d Jacobs said. \u201cWe have lots of reservoirs that are not full.\u201d<\/p>\n Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters said his biggest concern is what drought will do to agriculture and then food prices. If America has a poor crop year because of the drought, it could be a global problem. A strong natural El Nino weather oscillation is predicted, which often reduces crop yield in other places across the globe, such as India.<\/p>\n UCLA\u2019s Williams said the drought and hotter weather are driven by both natural variability and human-caused climate change with randomness a slightly bigger factor.<\/p>\n \u201cAll weather is now affected by climate change,\u201d Arizona\u2019s Jacobs said. \u201cThere is no such thing as weather that\u2019s divorced from climate trends. But this extreme event is extreme in the way that we\u2019ve been expecting: extreme heat waves, intense drought.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n Was this article valuable?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n