Extreme Drought Designation
Last Thursday, May 21, the U.S. Drought Monitor (https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu) designated portions of Rockbridge County as being in “extreme drought” (D3) while the rest of the county retained the designation of ‘severe drought’ (D2). This is important because it has implications for the eligibility of farmers and other businesses in Rockbridge for drought-related assistance.
The U.S. Drought Monitor was established in 1999 as a collaborative effort by the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Expert meteorologists and climatologists from these agencies continually track and monitor drought status across all 50 states and cooperate with other countries to track drought status in all of North America. The United States Drought Monitor (USDM) produces a weekly report every Thursday which includes a color-coded map showing drought status in all parts of the United States.
Precipitation plays a major role in the creation of the drought monitor map, but the map’s authors consider many data sources. Some of the numeric inputs include precipitation, streamflow, reservoir levels, temperature and evaporative demand, soil moisture and vegetation health. 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; it’s a blend of these physical indicators with drought impacts, field observations and local insight from a network of more than 450 experts. Using many different types of data and reconciling them with expert interpretation is what these scientists call “a convergence of evidence approach” and it is what makes the USDM unique.
Recognizing emerging drought, or determining when a drought is over, entails understanding what’s normal for a given location and season and observing both shortand long-term weather patterns. If an area has been in drought for a while, it usually takes more than one or two rains to end it. Intense heat can also make things dry out quickly, but, as an established practice, the map doesn’t show drought intensification by more than one category per week (though, in the event of a major storm, it can improve more quickly).
The U.S. Drought Monitor is not a forecast; it looks back in time, providing a “snapshot” of very recent conditions. Once a weekly USDM map is finalized and published, there will not be any changes considered or made retroactively.
The USDA uses the Drought Monitor to trigger disaster declarations, eligibility for low-interest loans, and eligibility for the Livestock Forage Disaster Program. The Internal Revenue Service uses it for tax deferral on forced livestock sales due to drought. State, local, tribal and basin-level decision makers use it to trigger drought responses or declare drought emergencies, ideally along with other local indicators of drought. Though these various entities use the U.S. Drought Monitor, the U.S. Drought Monitor organization itself does not trigger or otherwise dictate any public policy or political actions.
Rockbridge livestock producers should contact the Farm Service Agency at the Lexington USDA Service Center (44 Magnolia Square, Lexington (540) 463-7124) to report acreage farmed and reportable livestock inventories in order to be eligible for droughtrelated direct payments that are probable because of the “extreme drought” determination for Rockbridge of May 21.
Significant portions of this week’s column was taken directly from the United States Drought Monitor website: https://droughtmonitor. unl.edu.
