St Johns River basin hit hard by drought.
BREVARD COUNTY, Fla (WOFL FOX 35) – This week, the federal government’s U.S. Drought Monitor declared that only six percent of nation is impacted by drought conditions.
Still, a moderate-to-severe drought in Florida has contributed to more than 100 wildfires across the state and is hitting some areas particularly hard.
When Derrick Lockhart takes tourists out for an airboat ride at his business along the St. Johns River, he’s been extra careful lately.
“There’s just not a lot of room to maneuver around” said the owner of Airboat Rides at Midway," he says, "and you really gotta be on your ‘A’ game."
St Johns River basin hit hard by drought Lockhart showed us some of the drought damage on the river.
We saw little room for the alligators in the water, which is putting some of the reptiles at greater risk of being squished by an airboat in the shallow water.
We also saw thirsty cattle staying close to the shrinking water supply, while bald cypress trees with exposed roots appear to be moving farther away from it.
And what was once an island in the middle of the river, is now just a clump of trees.
Tourists are still taking tours, but Lockhart worries if the river continues to shrink, so will his riverside business.

Nationwide Drought of Last Few Years is Over in the U.S..
This exciting new report says that drought within in the United States has fallen to about 6.1% within the lower 48 states – which is the lowest it has been in 17 years.
Since the U.S. Drought Monitor was created almost two decades ago, it has delivered weekly data sets on the prevalence of drought within the country.
The previous record-low from the federal organization was reported in July 2010 with 7.7% drought.
The highest amount of recorded drought was 65.5% in September 2012.
CHECK OUT: Farmer Returns 700 Acres of California Coast to Native American Tribe Northern California alone has enjoyed the most abundant snow and rainfall it has had in 6 years.
Southern California, while it is still technically in drought, is expected to be much less harsh as the relieving weather conditions continue.
Gov.
Jerry Brown plans to elaborate on the state of drought emergency that he declared in 2014 after the wet season is over.
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ASHEVILLE – Drought conditions have improved in Asheville and several Western North Carolina counties after a rain event that brought nearly 5 inches to the Asheville Regional Airport over a course of 10 days.
A portion of Buncombe County was also considered in a moderate drought with a total of 35 counties across the state listed in this category.
Within Buncombe County, the western area of the county is experiencing some abnormally dry conditions, the least severe category, but the remainder of the county was not considered to be in a drought of any kind, according to the drought monitor map.
The National Weather Service recorded 7.58 inches of rainfall from April 1-26, which is 4.58 inches above normal for the month.
Within the past week and half, 4.5 inches have been recorded at the Asheville Regional Airport.
The city’s regional airport recorded 1.98 inches of rain on April 22, a record-setting amount of rainfall within a 24-hour period for that date, according to the NWS.
For the year, the Asheville Regional Airport has observed an above normal amount of rainfall with 15.92 inches recorded, according to the NWS.
Although the past week brought relief to several western counties, drought conditions will linger into the upcoming months and could potentially get worse, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Duckett said that although recent rainfall has helped the area, farmers still don’t know what to expect going forward.
58 inches | + 4.58 inches

Planting gorgeous gardens for drought.
So what’s a gardener to do?
From Tesselaar Plants we get a few suggestions: • Go mulch: If you’ve not mulched before, this might be the summer you decide to join the many fans of mulch.
Mulch makes a big difference in the way a garden looks in the hot and dry.
When watering the garden, it stops the soil from drying out before the plants can make good use of the moisture.
Easy to install, they run across the soil surface, delivering water directly to roots.
• The right plants: There’s nothing like a drought to make us take stock of what’s growing – or trying to survive – in our garden.
Drought does make honest gardeners of us all.
Flower carpet roses are another drought-tolerant option and they come in a rainbow selection of shades.
• Summing it up: During a drought we can still fill our gardens with gorgeous, flowering plants as long as we mulch, irrigate efficiently and above all, select the right plants.

Drought numbers hit new low nationwide but state still feeling effects.
There’s good news to report on the drought front from the U.S. Drought Monitor: US #Drought Monitor 4 25 17: Drought (D1-4) down to 6.11% of Lower48, the least amount since USDM stats started in 2000 pic.twitter.com/Dl00fXR6A0 — Drought Center (@DroughtCenter) April 27, 2017 While more of the U.S. moves toward easing drought conditions, it’s still drier than it should be across parts of Alabama.
According to this week’s Drought Monitor Report, abnormally dry conditions are hanging in there for nearly 87 percent of the state.
The driest spots in the state are in Walker, Tuscaloosa, Fayette and a sliver of Jefferson counties.
More of the state is drought-free than last week, however, 13.28 percent this week compared with 6.85 percent last week.
According to the National Weather Service north Alabama got about an inch of rain and most of central Alabama got less than an inch over the weekend.
Rain from storms on Wednesday and Thursday of this week — and anticipated storms on Sunday — will be factored into next week’s report.
The weather service said 1 to 1.25 inches of rain per week is the typical average.
The seasonal outlook from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center shows drought conditions lingering through July for parts of the state and likely redeveloping across a good part of the rest of Alabama.
The only part of the state to escape drought worries could be southwest Alabama, according to the CPC.

California’s drought is over, but water conservation remains a ‘way of life’.
Gov.
Brown’s executive order lifts the drought emergency in all California counties except Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Tuolumne, where emergency drinking water programs will remain in place to help communities that ran short of groundwater supplies.
The executive order keeps in place conservation measures that are designed to make California more resilient against future droughts and promote water conservation as a long-term practice.
They include bans on watering lawns within 48 hours of rain, washing cars without a shut-off nozzle on the hose or cities watering grass on road medians using potable water.
Brown declared the drought emergency in 2014, and a year later, officials later ordered mandatory conservation for the first time in state history.
The agencies involved include California Department of Water Resources (DWR), SWRCB, California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and California Energy Commission (CEC).
The order has four primary objectives: use water more wisely, eliminate water waste, strengthen local drought resilience and improve agricultural water use efficiency and drought planning.
According to Marcus, the final report was released after Brown lifted the drought emergency.
“The report is about the next steps of that process.” The water action plan, Marcus said, aims to curb “truly wasteful practices” such as watering lawns to the extent that the water runs down the street.

April 28, 2017 – During the 7-day period (ending Tuesday morning), widespread heavy rain eased drought but caused local flooding from Oklahoma to the Carolina Coast.
Additional improvements to drought intensity and coverage were noted in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic in response to late-spring rain as well as recovering groundwater levels.
For example, 12-month precipitation stood at 60 to 75 percent of normal in the interior Southeast’s Moderate to Extreme Drought (D1 to D3) areas.
South Heavy rain in northern portions of the region contrasted with dry conditions closer to the Gulf Coast.
High Plains Wet weather brought drought relief to the southern half of the region, while conditions remained unchanged on the northern High Plains’ long-term drought areas (denoted by an “L” on the map).
Precipitation amounts were highly variable, but well-placed moderate to heavy rain and wet snow (1-3 inches liquid equivalent, locally more) led to reductions of Abnormal Dryness (D0) and Moderate Drought (D1) over southern-most portions of Wyoming, northern and northeastern Colorado, as well as the northwestern and southeastern corners of Kansas.
Additional D1 and D0 reductions were made from eastern Colorado into southwestern Kansas despite lighter rainfall (half inch or less), as precipitation totals over the past 90 days were now mostly well above normal, with 30-day totals locally more than three times normal.
Farther east, well-placed moderate to heavy rain and wet snow (1-3 inches liquid equivalent, locally more) led to reductions of Abnormal Dryness (D0) and Moderate Drought (D1) over southern-most portions of Wyoming as well as northern and northeastern Colorado.
Additional D1 and D0 reductions were made in eastern Colorado despite lighter rainfall (half inch or less), as precipitation totals over the past 90 days were now mostly well above normal, with 30-day totals locally more than three times normal.
In Hawaii, moderate to heavy rain (locally more than 1 inch) on the southern coast of the Big Island led to a small reduction of Severe Drought (D2).

United States Sets Drought Record.
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — It’s been three years since a snowless snow survey was a sign of how drastic California’s drought had become.
Now, a record-breaking winter is turning that upside down, and not just in California.
The wettest winter on record has filled our reservoirs to capacity and left snow as far as the eye can see in the Sierra.
The winter has been good to California, but it’s not just the Golden State.
Satellite images show how a bone-dry river system has swelled into a series of rushing torrents.
Across the nation, the country has hit a record low of drought coverage.
Only 1.1 percent of the nation is in severe to exceptional drought, the lowest since the birth of the federal Drought Monitor in 1999.
That bodes well for other states that rely more on rainfall than reservoirs.
The snow levels have been flirting with records, and the final snow survey is set for Monday—something that will be a much whiter sight than 2014.

After three years of drought and failed harvests, Kenya is in the grip of a national crisis.
Kenya has allocated US$ 128 million towards the national drought response effort, expanded social safety nets, and is working with the international community to mitigate the impacts of the drought on the most vulnerable.
But the US$ 166 million appeal launched by the UN and partners in March 2017 has raised a mere 18 per cent of its funding target, US$ 10.3 million of which from the UN’s own Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).
Governments that respond to humanitarian needs must be rewarded with support, not penalised by an international community that looks the other way.
The number of people facing severe food insecurity – 2.6 million – has tripled in less than a year.
Children are suffering from acute malnutrition and preventable diseases like diarrhoea, measles and cholera.
The situation would have been far worse had the Kenyan Government, the Kenyan Red Cross, the private sector, and the humanitarian community not stepped in earlier this year – declaring a national drought disaster and tapping into early warning and emergency preparedness systems, public-private partnerships and social safety nets.
Tensions will rise and diseases will spread.
With US$ 20 million we could stem the spread of cholera and diarrhoea by providing access to clean water and sanitation.
Let’s put our sticks in a bundle to make Kenya’s drought response – and its communities – unbreakable.

A total of 7.7 million people in Ethiopia are estimated to be in dire need of food aid in 2017 due to a worsening drought, spokesperson of the country’s National Disaster Risk Management Commission Debebe Zewdie said.
Speaking to Ethiopia’s official news agency ENA, Zewdie stated that especially the areas of Oromiya, Amhara, and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region (SNNP) were experiencing severe water shortages.
Ethiopia’s National Disaster Risk Management Commission already gave a joint statement with the U.N. office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) last week, saying that low rainfalls would cause the second harvest to fall out very poor, and that they were also fearing the spread of contagious diseases.
Ethiopia already suffered from reduced rainfalls in 2015 and 2016 due to a weather phenomenon called El Niño, which affected around 10 million people in the region.
His view was supported by the reports of local farmers who said that this was the first time in the course of generations that a drought hit that hard.
An Ethiopian pastoralist, who lost almost 700 sheep and goats, told Oxfam that not even his parents experienced such severe droughts.
Ethiopia is not the only country in the region affected by oscillations in rainfall.
A total of 12 to 13 million people are said to be in need of humanitarian assistance across the Horn of Africa region, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
In addition to those affected in Ethiopia, there are 2.7 million in Kenya, 2.9 million in Somalia and 1.6 million people in Uganda who will not be able to meet their nutritional needs on their own.
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