Southwest Drought Briefing: February 21, 2023

Welcome to the Southwest Drought Briefing 

Speaker: Joel Lisonbee | NOAA/National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)

• Welcome to the February 2023 Southwest Drought Briefing.
• Learn more about the Southwest Drought Learning Network. 
• View past webinar recordings at drought.gov/webinars.
• Introducing the speakers: 
  • Curtis Riganti, National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
  • Cee Nell, VisLab lead at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) 

Current Conditions and Drought Outlook 

Speaker: Curtis Riganti | National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

• Significant improvements have occurred to the short-term drought situation in the Southwest in the last 6 to 8 weeks. All drought in the region now is strictly long-term.
• Despite the improvements and good current snowpack, significant long-term precipitation deficits, going back 3-5 years, still exist in many areas.
• Outlooks for the next couple of weeks favor above-normal precipitation, though outlooks for March-May from CPC favor near or below-normal precipitation for most areas.

Introduction to the USGS VisLab: Water Data Visualisation processes and tools

Speaker: Cee Nell | VisLab lead, USGS

• The Objective of the USGS Water Data Visualisation Team is to connect USGS water science to non-technical audiences.
• VisLab provides interactive data visualizations, for example: 
  • The Water Cycle demonstrates how humans interact with the water cycle.
  • From Snow to Flow provides a plain-language explanation of the complexities of snow melt dynamics and how it relates to streamflow and engages water audiences with snow hydrology research at USGS. 

Questions and Answers

Speaker: Emile Elias | Director, USDA Southwest Climate Hub