The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service has released its June Water Supply Outlook Report, which predicts water shortages across much of Oregon this summer.
Most snow monitoring sites melted out 1 to 2 weeks earlier than normal.
Snow at several of these locations melted out at rates that were up to twice as fast as usual for snowmelt in May.
Many of Oregon’s major irrigation reservoirs are storing near average amounts of water as of the end of May, but several have begun to dip below average.
The Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Willow basins are storing the most water with capacity at 95-111 percent of average.
Elsewhere, most of the state’s major reservoirs range from 70-110 percent of average.
Drought intensifies NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center is calling for a warmer and drier than normal summer and the Drought Monitor recently added a severe drought designation for parts of central and southeastern Oregon.
Wildfire danger Fire officials along the Oregon Coast and across the state are warning of intensive wildfire danger due to the dry conditions and less water.
North Lincoln Fire & Rescue District officials are urging beachgoers to be extremely careful with warming fires and make sure they are dead out before leaving the beach.
Each spring and summer NLFR crews are called to Lincoln City beaches to put out wildfires that officials say are human-caused.

The leader of Slow Food Hunter Valley and regional councillor of Slow Food International shares this revelation as she paces the floor of her East Maitland business, Reader’s Cafe and Larder.
“The poor sheep had had nothing to eat for quite some time, having only inhaled dust during its last few days and it had starved like the others.” As far as agricultural horror stories go, the sheep story is up there – but Dempster is far from finished discussing some of the more distressing scenes she has witnessed or heard first-hand from local farmers in recent times.
Some of its key projects includes ‘Feeding the Community’, a project that converts excess produce and food from farms into nutritious meals for the disadvantaged and hungry, and ‘Fresh Food in Remote Communities’, which works with local Indigenous leaders and schools to grow fresh food.
But the group is perhaps best known for assisting the region’s farmers, who are doing it tough.
Dempster tells the story of one farmer who was devastated to find his entire harvest destroyed by bugs.
“So I told him to wait and that we were sending some of our team to help.” The Slow Food Hunter Valley volunteers helped the farmer wash the leaves and sort what they could salvage and they sold the produce at market.
How can you look after your family on $185?” “He would have made an average of $1800, but that day he made $185 from what we could salvage.” One farmer who has benefitted from the work of Slow Food Hunter Valley is Austin Breiner, who specialises in heirloom vegetables – most notably pumpkins, having grown 40 different varieties last year from seeds around the world.
With affection, he recounts how Dempster worked to ensure water was delivered to farmers within the region last year.
“And I spent most of last summer carting 1000-litre drums of water around and hand-watering what I could, just to keep things alive until that rain comes … The trouble is, it’s not coming and now the sub-soil is drying out, too, so we’re predicting an even tougher year next year.” Slow Food Hunter Valley is doing what it can, but what can the everyday Australian do to help?
“Seek out farmers’ markets in your area and support your local growers who have struggled to get that fresh produce to your table.” Secondly, you can back the Buy a Bale Campaign, which raises money to support our farmers.

The move came as a result of monitoring the water at the Galesville and Berry Creek Dams and conversations with the Douglas County watermaster, Douglas County Public Works Director Scott Adams told the commissioners.
The move was not entirely unexpected.
Watermaster Susan Douthit had suggested last week a drought declaration might be in the offing.
Precipitation was low overall last winter, and May was unusually dry, with .27 inches of rain, about 2 inches below normal.
And it doesn’t look like water levels will improve this summer.
The National Weather Service in Medford reports Douglas County is expected to receive above-average temperatures and below-average rainfall over the summer months.
The county drought emergency was passed on a unanimous vote by the commissioners.
It will next go to the governor’s office for an official drought declaration.
The drought declaration follows on the heels of an announcement by the Douglas Forest Protective Association that fire season will begin Friday.
DFPA is anticipating a bad fire season, and the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center is redicting elevated fire risk in July.

Areas of abnormally dry conditions are spreading farther east, now into Central Indiana.
While we are not in a “drought” at this time, this is a good indicator that we could be slip into one this summer, if we don’t get some much needed rainfall.
We’ll have a few chances for rain over the next few days but it will be spotty to scattered in nature.
We’ve received only about 30% of our average rainfall since mid-April.
Not only are brown lawns arriving early this year, but so are 90° temperatures.
Keep in mind, our average high in Indianapolis tops out at 85° during the summer.
But 90’s are normal.
By the end of the weekend, we should be at six 90° days for the year, so far.
It will be a hot one today.
If you’re going to be mowing the lawn later this afternoon, temperatures will be at or near 90°.

Lake Cachuma is low, State Water restrictions are in place and water use regulations are being enforced.
Examples like this demonstrate why proactive water resource management and community water conservation are critical in prolonged droughts.
The Smart Rebates Program provides cash rebates for a number of water-efficient household appliances, rain barrels and weather-based smart irrigation controllers.
Aside from helping you conserve water, the District is working hard on developing new water supplies and making our existing supplies more sustainable.
The AMI system can help to prevent water from being wasted and save our customers money.
This is necessary to ensure that we maintain a long-term sustainable groundwater supply.
In addition to these projects, the Carpinteria Groundwater Basin was recently re-designated by the California Department of Water Resources as a high-priority basin through the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.
For further information on this, check the District’s website.
Each of these projects will help to ensure that the Carpinteria Valley has an adequate water supply in the face of droughts.
Looking for water conservation inspiration?

Hundreds of Upper Hunter properties have run out of water, says a council boss who told Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about the effects of the drought on the weekend.
While coastal parts of the region are having a wet few days, Scone, Merriwa and surrounds remain parched.
Merriwa has had 162.8mm of rain, but 61mm of that fell in three days in February.
When Upper Hunter Shire Council general manager Steve McDonald met with the Prime Minister on the weekend, he explained the severity of the situation.
Mr Turnbull was in the Hunter visiting his property before he and several ministers kicked off a tour of drought-affected parts of NSW and Queensland.
Mr McDonald explained to Mr Turnbull the urgent need for water security measures and help for farmers to cope with the cost of food transport.
It appears to be getting more variable, certainly in this part of the world and back where Lucy and I are in the Hunter,” he said.
Do you run fewer stock?
“It’s a mix of things but I think the important thing for people in regional and rural Australia to know is that we understand how big a challenge this is, we really do.” Merriwa farmer Ron Campbell is one of the many living that challenge.
“Agistment is almost non-existent, with the cost of any grain and hay increasing substantially,” he said.

Just how long interim funding will play a central role in responding to water issues depends on implementing long-term solutions to contamination and groundwater depletion.
But the lingering impact of the drought, especially on groundwater supplies, means some still rely on emergency water tanks while they wait for long-term solutions.
This is particularly true in the San Joaquin Valley, where more than 300 domestic well users whose taps have run dry continue to use tanks provided by the state through a program originally slated to end in June.
With the help of emergency funding requested by Assembly member Joaquin Arambula (D-Kingsberg), whose largely rural district is in the valley, the emergency water supply program will likely continue another year at a cost of $3.5 million.
Also included in the emergency relief efforts is $10 million to address failing domestic wells and septic tanks, and $10 million for the Drinking Water for Schools Program that funds treatment solutions for schools that struggle with contamination.
That number does not include people who rely on domestic wells.
In the interim the state is also pushing consolidation, where those with failed wells or unsafe septic systems are connected to nearby systems in working order.
A University of California, Davis study found that two-thirds of residents in disadvantaged San Joaquin Valley communities without safe drinking water lived within a mile of a system meeting clean water requirements.
The fund is included in Governor Jerry Brown’s budget as a trailer bill, and may undergo changes before the final budget faces a vote.
Which means emergency water needs could still require short-term funding solutions, such as those in Arambula’s request.

A prolonged lack of rain and dissipating groundwater destroyed his fields and killed his livestock, prompting Qayoom to move with his wife and their eight children to the western city of Herat from their village in neighboring Badghis Province.
Speaking with Radio Free Afghanistan from his temporary home in Dasht-e Shaidayee on the outskirts of Herat, he described how the drought disrupted their lives and eventually forced them to leave their village, Sharshar.
“We could not farm our lands because of the lack of rain.
I had cows and sheep, but they died because there was no grass or pasture.” When the cattle began to die, the price per cow dropped from $1,400 to just under $300, and it was difficult to find a buyer for a sheep for under $30.
Just recently a UN office warned that this year’s drought has affected Afghanistan’s 20 provinces including Badghis, Uruzgan, and Jawzjan.
Janan Kochi is a nomad and a livestock herder in Charchino district of southern Uruzgan Province.
“We spent the winter and spring without rain.
“Thirteen million Afghans in 20 provinces [out of a total 34] are affected by drought,” he told journalists on June 3.
Despite these pledges, Qayoom says his family has received little assistance.
“All I need is food and a shelter to live my life.

This time last year, Tampa Bay was enduring one of Florida’s worst droughts.
• • • During the winter months, when rain is sporadic and river levels drop, the utility that manages the bay area’s drinking water supply leans on its reservoir.
&icast_location=USFL0481 target="_blank">>>EXTENDED FORECAST:> The 10-day outlook for the Tampa Bay area>> That often happens well into the summer.
During last year’s drought, the reservoir fell to about 5 billion gallons.
>>>FROM 2017:> More than 100 wildfires scorch Florida, a sign of how dry we are>> Lightning strikes can ignite the dry ground, leading to wildfires.
"We’ve not seen the lightning (fires) that we had last year," she said.
"We’ll dry up again," Tear said.
In Florida, the rain has always been a double-edged sword.
That’s because heavy rains after drought can lead to sinkholes.
And wet ground makes it hard for the Forest Service to starve fires of fuel through mitigation.

The research paper, written by Professor Yang Haibo of the Zhengzhou University, is titled "Study of the temporal and spatial patterns of drought in the Yellow River basin based on SPEI," and was recently published in Science China: Earth Sciences.
The extreme-point symmetric mode decomposition (ESMD) and Bernaola-Galvan segmentation algorithm (BGSA) were used in this study.
The annual and seasonal variation, frequency and intensity of drought were studied in the YRB.
Influenced by geographical location and the East Asian monsoon climate, the hydrometeorological conditions of the YRB are complicated and varied.
With a deficiency of water resources and disequilibrium of the precipitation distribution, the YRB is the area most vulnerable to drought in the major basins of China.
The YRB spans a wide range of 23 longitudes and 10 latitudes.
Drought periods with 2.9, 5, 10.2 and 18.3 years were characterized by ESMD.
The BGSA can be used to divide the long research period with the obtained variability of each mean segment.
And the sequence of drought intensity was summer, spring, winter and autumn with mean values of 0.93, 0.40, 0.05 and 0.04, respectively.
The paper identified the spatial and temporal patterns of drought in the YRB for the last 55 years, and put forward the targeted drought resistance measures according to the characteristics of the YRB and the various subzones, which provided reference and basis for the monitoring and early warning of drought in other areas.