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Drought can have a significant impact on the management and operations of water utilities, from loss of water supply and poor source water quality to increased demand from customers and reduced revenues. Changing conditions in precipitation, snowpack, soil moisture, temperature, and evapotranspiration must be well monitored and better forecasted to provide water managers early warning of drought. Water managers facing water shortages need access to new technologies, tools, and resources to better understand and reduce drought risk to their water supply systems.

Drought is a normal part of our climate cycle. Often underestimated due to its slow onset, drought stands as the second most costly hazard in the United States. According to the U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, generated at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), 26 drought events between 1980 and 2018 caused specific losses over $1.0 Billion, resulting in $244.3 Billion in direct damages from those events alone. This does not include numerous drought events with losses under $1 Billion as well as indirect impact of drought to the economy. Second only to tropical cyclones, drought affects agriculture, water supply, energy, wildlife, public health, and has many other economic, environmental, and social impacts.

Elizabeth Weight, CIRES/NIDIS Regional Drought Information Systems Coordinator, represented NIDIS and CIRES in the May 2018 workshop “Advancing Sustainability of U.S.-Mexico Transboundary Drylands.” Ms. Weight’s contribution to the workshop, synthesized in the proceedings, focused on drought early warning systems as a potential innovative bi-national research collaboration and management solution for U.S.-Mexico transboundary drylands areas.

The Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB), part of the state’s Department of Natural Resources, has launched an interactive dashboard that displays drought vulnerability at the state and county level based on Colorado’s 2018 Drought Plan. An Esri Story Map, the platform takes users through visual summaries of Colorado drought risk by sectors, using images and graphs to provide an interactive and engaging experience.

The Colorado River provides water to almost 40 million people and 4 million acres of farmland. Since 2000, historically dry conditions have added stress to the Colorado River’s water resources. As a result, the risk of reaching critically low elevations at Lakes Powell and Mead has increased nearly four-fold over the past decade. Critically low reservoir levels could affect compliance with the 1922 Colorado River Compact; Lake Powell could drop below the level required to generate hydropower; and the economies, livelihoods, and natural resources of the Basin states could be negatively impacted.

Kicked off in March 2017, the Sub-Seasonal Climate Forecast Rodeo comprised of a year-long, real-time forecasting competition. The Bureau of Reclamation sponsored the competition in partnership with NOAA, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and California Department of Water Resources.

Droughts are not commonly thought of as public health threats. The often-slow onset of drought, compared to other extremes, makes it difficult to identify the links between the physical characteristics of drought and societal impacts. California is no stranger to drought, and the most recent drought brought to the forefront the impacts of drought on health, including decreased water quantity and quality, coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever) outbreaks, increased mortality rates, and adverse mental health outcomes as livelihoods are challenged. In a post-drought coordination workshop, the California-Nevada Drought Early Warning System network identified better preparing public health professionals for drought as a priority.

The 2019 Biennial U.S. Drought Monitor Forum in Bowling Green, KY, initially scheduled for March 19–21, 2019, will be postponed until later this year. With the uncertainty of another federal government shutdown after February 15, the backlog of work that must be completed from the recent shutdown, and several USDM authors that could not now attend the Forum in mid-March, all 11 USDM authors voted for postponement.

In order to help communities understand and prepare for the various hazards that could impact their people, infrastructure, and economies, FEMA has developed a risk assessment process to identify and determine their level of vulnerability to these risks. FEMA’s Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) is a three-step risk assessment process that helps states, tribes, territories, and local communities answer the following questions: What threats and hazards can affect our community? If they occurred, what impacts would those threats and hazards have on our community? Based on those impacts, what capabilities should our community have?

According to news reports, the United States has been experiencing a nationwide Christmas tree shortage, along with price hikes as a result of low supplies. The U.S. Christmas tree industry is a $2 billion a year industry, according to annual reports from the National Christmas Tree Association.