drought

Drought conditions have intensified in Arizona and New Mexico in the last month, with precipitation less than 5 percent of average across most of both states, according to the June Climate Outlook from CLIMAS.

The governor of New Mexico declared a state of drought last week for the entire state, as moderate to exceptional drought persists throughout the entire Southwest region.

Since January 1, precipitation in Arizona and New Mexico has been less than 50 percent of average, but thanks to higher-than-average precipitation in December, less than half of each state is currently in extreme or exceptional drought.

March was 8.6 degrees F warmer than average across the contiguous U.S., making it the warmest March on record with over 15,000 high temperature records broken, according to NOAA. Only one other month has seen a larger departure from its average, January 2006.

Suffering from a decade-long drought, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, along with water representatives from New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle, appealed in a Capitol Hill briefing for help from the federal government last week, reports the Las Vegas Review.

Precipitation throughout Arizona and New Mexico over the past month was less than 75 percent of normal, according to the March 2012 Southwest Climate Outlook from CLIMAS.

Posted by Jeremy Weiss Jonathan Overpeck Julia Cole | on March 22, 2012
When prolonged high temperatures combine with scant precipitation, droughts intensify. This potent combination struck the southern U.S. in spring and summer of 2011-and may again in coming months-causing crops to wither and turning trees and shrubs into tinder. Record-setting wildland fires raced across parts of the Southwest and southern Plains. By the end of September, exceptional drought covered about half of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma combined. When all was said and done, damages exceeded $1 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).