Drought Categories . . . “The guy on the radio says we are in D3 . . . what’s that all about?”

Did you know that drought has it’s own scale? Have you ever heard of the classifications of drought that are used by the National Drought Mitigation Center on the U.S. Drought Monitor? They sound a little bit like the Enhanced Fujita Scale for tornadoes . . .”that was an EF3” or the Saffir-Simpson Scale for hurricanes . . . “this one’s a category two hurricane”.

To find out more about about the categories of drought, please watch our Assessing Drought in the United States animation and check out the U.S. Drought Monitor Classification Scheme page.

Still interested in drought? Be sure to visit the National Integrated Drought Information System’s (NIDIS) U.S. Drought Portal. This is a rich resource of drought information across the United States.

One final reminder . . . please keep those precipitation observations coming in, especially on days when it doesn’t rain (just report zero). Your observations are used each and every week in the preparation of the U.S. Drought Monitor.

PS - OK, you thought this message was going to be short didn’t you . . . If you have an extra moment, please file a Condition Report letting us know whether you are rather wet, rather dry or somewhere in between.  These are looked at regularly by the drought monitor authors and are extremely helpful. Thanks!