GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO/KJCT)– Although we have gotten some rain in the valley recently, Mesa County has been upgraded from severe to extreme drought.
The National Weather Service says the county leveled up in the drought because of new data that becomes available every Thursday.
The new drought outlook comes from data that is updated on a weekly basis, and records information from the previous week.
Even though we have gotten some rainfall, the hot and dry conditions last week were enough to put the county in the extreme category.
“The data was only from July 10th.
So that was before we were getting into that unsettled pattern, and we were still hitting those triple-digit temperatures.
And we had some pretty extreme fire behavior across the region," said Meteorologist Megan Stackhouse.
Out of the five stages of drought, the extreme category is the fourth highest, and meteorologists are hopeful the county could go back down to lower stages when the next updated data comes out.

Council members will discuss whether Drought Level 1 of the city’s water conservation and drought contingency plan should be implemented.
For Drought Level 1 to go into effect, the Council must determine the city has less than 24 months of water supply.
If so, beginning Aug. 1, watering would be restricted to once every seven days, and most customers would temporarily pay 5 percent more for water to encourage conservation.
According to Anthony Wilson, the city’s public information officer, the rules apply to residential and commercial users.
One industry not affected by Drought Level I is car washes.
Wilson said most of them reuse and recycle their water so their business is not affected.
To return to standard conservation mode, which San Angelo is in now, the city would need to have a lot of heavy rainfall over a short period of time.
"This would create a run-off into the rivers and streams and would replenish our lakes," Wilson said.
Wilson said Goodfellow would be under the same regulations as everyone else, and the city is awaiting information from the federal government on what effect the temporary residents will have on San Angelo’s water supply.
Potential cost increases Residential usage Cost per 1,000 gallons Added charge 0-2,000 gallons $3.30 0 3K-5K gallons $4.81 5% 6K-15K gallons $5.62 5% 16K-39K gallons $6.02 10% >39K gallons $11.02 20% Non-residential usage Cost per 1,000 gallons Added charge All gallons $6.01 5% Landscape usage Cost per 1,000 gallons Added charge Summer 0-89K gallons $6.07 10% Summer >89K gallons $13.58 10%

The public is being asked to submit information that could be helpful to local, state and national decision-makers in assessing drought conditions and impacts across Missouri.
Information on area conditions can be submitted to the Missouri Extension Drought Impact Reporter at arcg.is/1f95Pi, according to Pat Guinan, University of Missouri Extension climatologist.
Guinan worked with the National Drought Mitigation Center and the National Integrated Drought Information System to develop the website.
"The site will be very helpful when it comes to assessing drought conditions and compiling impact reports at the local, county and state level," Guinan said.
"I encourage your participation."
The information provided by users is shared with the national Drought Impact Reporter (droughtreporter.unl.edu), the nation’s first comprehensive database of drought impacts.
The reporter allows contributors to upload image files up to 10 megabytes in size.
Subscriptions can be submitted to the Drought Impact Reporter RSS feed at moderator.droughtreporter.unl.edu/rssfeed.
For example, the feed for Missouri is at moderator.droughtreporter.unl.edu/rssfeed/MO.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Risk Management Agency provide funds for the Drought Impact Reporter.

File Photo Melville Harris, Gleaner Writer The St Elizabeth Municipal Corporation says it needs approximately $20 million to truck water to drought-stricken communities in the parish.
At its recently held monthly meeting the municipal corporation passed two resolutions seeking funding from the Ministry of Local Governmennt and Community Development and the Ministry of Agriculture.
The resolutions, which were unanimously passed, sought $10 million from each ministry.
A resolution was also passed seeking to have the relaxation of a regulation for truckers who will be engaged in the trucking of water for domestic use to obtain certiication of sterilization from the National Water commission.
Councillors pointed out that the cost to have a truck certified as sterilized was estimated at about $25,000 and that truckers were not willing pay the cost.
They complained about the time it took to get this certification.
The councillors also want a reduction in the cost of water bought from the NWC to truck to householders, pointiong out that many of the householders were NWC customers and that the utility did not have adequate trucks to provide water for all its customers.
In the second resolution to the Ministry of Agriculture, the municipal corporation says the remaining $10 million was needed to truck water to farmers who were badly affected by the drought.
At a recent post cabinet press breifing, Minister of Local Government and Community Development Desmond McKenszie announced that $30 million would be allocated to municipalities for trucking water to householders affected by drought.
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People have been talking a lot about water recently, especially Williamson County folks who depend on well water in the Florence area.
Well pumps he’s installed for aggregate quarries and asphalt plants near Salado have been capable of pulling 60 gallons a minute “at least.” “The quarries use a lot of water, and there are a lot of them,” he said.
“Regular households don’t use that much water.” Water was a paramount concern earlier this year surrounding the new Asphalt, Inc. LLC aggregate quarry and asphalt plant site just east of Florence at 10957 Farm-to-Market 487 in Williamson County.
I’ll wait and see how it plays out.” Faulkner and other residents tried to prevent the asphalt plant from happening, have kept monitoring the situation and are trying to form an underground water conservation district similar to Bell County’s Clearwater Underground Water Conservation District.
“I think the drought and the asphalt plant have all played a role in the water shortage.” Causes Although people have been dropping their well pumps recently, Fisher said it’s difficult to draw a causal link between underground water levels declining and the asphalt plant’s daily usage.
The Herald was told the asphalt plant’s operations manager was not available and the state does not monitor water usage at asphalt plants and aggregate quarries.
TCEQ permits allow for four wells to be dug at the Asphalt, Inc. site near Florence.
Meanwhile, East Texas is doing all right.
“It just goes back to the sheer number of people: It’s a combination of everybody over the years.” No state monitoring The TCEQ does not monitor operations or water usage at quarry sites but responds to complaints and comments, Keese said, previously.
There are nearly 100 groundwater conservation districts across the state, according to the water board.

Despite a bout of heavy rain last month, the state is getting dryer.
All of Merrimack, Sullivan, Strafford and Belknap Counties are now in moderate drought, along with parts of Northern and Southern New Hampshire.
State water conservation chief Stacey Herbold says summers can always be tough on groundwater and drinking water supplies – but the recent heat and lack of rain isn’t helping.
The state is 1 to 3 inches below normal precipitation over the past three months.
Herbold says it means homeowners may already be seeing their lawns turn brown and gardens dry up.
She says farmers’ growing seasons are also suffering, and stream levels are shrinking.
"At this point, everything is pointing to a much dryer summer.
More than 40 of the state’s water systems have mandatory or voluntary outdoor water use restrictions in place as of this week.
Before this three-year period, Herbold says, New Hampshire’s last drought was in 2003.
Groundwater levels typically recharge the most in spring and fall, when lower temperatures prevent evaporation, and there are fewer growing plants to suck up rainfall.

COLUMBIA, Mo.
While the drought continues to affect the livelihood of many farmers across the state, the public is being asked to submit local drought information to better understand the impacts.
This information can be submitted to the Missouri Extension Drought Impact Reporter here.
"This site will be very helpful when it comes to assessing drought conditions and compiling impact reports at the local, county and state level, University of Missouri Extension Climatologist Pat Guinan said.
While the ridge is expected to breakdown next week and bring with it some much needed rain, unfortunately it won’t help alleviate the drought conditions that are affect Mid-Missourians.
"Input from Missourians helps decision-makers gain a more complete and accurate portrayal of drought conditions affecting the Show-Me State," Guinan said.
Previously, ABC 17 reported that brown grass isn’t dead, but in fact dormant.
They are as follows: – You’ll want to avoid watering in the heat of the day, as the water will just evaporate too quickly.
When you do water, water at least twice a week max.
"Your local input and expertise is valued and will provide additional information for the author to consider when assessing Missouri drought conditions and categories."

BRYAN, Tex (KBTX) – Through an atypical helping of early July rainfall, we’ve been able to keep the drought away from a good portion of the Brazos Valley in the newest weekly update from the US Drought Monitor.
Notable changes: severe drought has been clipped away for our northern counties, where many north of OSR remain in the ‘Moderate drought’ category.
The helpful rain from July 4th through early this week has allowed much to remain unchanged from the ‘abnormally dry’ category.
This should make sense, as we’re still nearly 6” under our normal total for this time of year.
However, the early July rain has given us a good half inch above our ‘month to date’ total.
Biggest takeaway: For being at nearly half a foot deficit half way through the year, it’s encouraging to see plenty of green grass around the Brazos Valley.
Even after rain, vegetation can dry quickly.
Fire danger will be increasing quickly (pretty typical in a Lone Star summer) as high pressure builds, and we get a breezy southwest wind next week.
From the US Drought Monitor Website run by University of Nebraska-Lincoln: The U.S. Drought Monitor, established in 1999, is a weekly map of drought conditions produced jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The U.S. Drought Monitor website is hosted and maintained by the drought center.

We have reached the first stage of official drought.
The Drought Monitor updates each week with conditions for locations across the country and we are now officially at Moderate drought in several Mid-Michigan locations.
Reaching moderate drought means: Some damage to crops and pastures is likely or occurring.
Whispering Pines Christmas Tree Farm in Flushing Township has reported a 60 to 70% loss of trees they planted this year.
With dry conditions fire danger also remains a risk with high potential for fires to spread if brush is ignited.
Multiple burn bans are in effect and the current fire danger rating from the Michigan DNR shows our region highlighted in the High to Extreme mark.
Avoid burning even small fires until we get meaningful soaking rainfall.
We have minor shower chances ahead but if it falls too heavy, the water will simply run-off the dry ground.
We need some good steady soakers in-order to rebound from the dry point we are at.
Stay with the NBC25/FOX66 StormReady weather team for updates on the forecast.

So far, so good for the Ohio Valley The GFS computer model 2 week rain forecast has about 2 inches for the Louisville area.
Rainfall for the last 7 days is in the zero to one inch range over most locations.
Over the last 14 days, portions of the L0uisville area have received over 2 inches.
In the last 30 days, many locations have had over 5 inches of rain.
In Lincoln CO., near Stanford, KY over 15 inches of rain has fallen.
The drought was worsening rapidly and would continue all summer.
The European computer model 14 day rain forecast also has 2 inches or so of rain for Louisville.
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