SALEM, Ore. – Governor Kate Brown announced a drought emergency for Harney County Thursday due to low snowpack and precipitation, low streamflows and warming temperatures as Oregon braces for the upcoming wildfire season.
Forecast water conditions are not expected to improve, and drought is likely to have significant impacts on agriculture, livestock, natural resources and the local economy, the governor’s office said in a news release.
Harney County officials requested the state to take action on May 14, and the Oregon Drought Council considered the counties’ requests by weighing current water conditions, future climatic forecasts, and agricultural impacts.
“Oregon has already experienced hotter and dryer than usual conditions, and drought conditions in Harney County are expected to worsen in the months ahead,” Brown said.
“To minimize the impacts of drought on the local economy and community, I’m directing state agencies to work with local and federal partners to provide assistance to Harney County.” The governor’s drought declaration allows increased flexibility in how water is managed to ensure that limited supplies are used as efficiently as possible.
Oregon’s state agencies will continue to work with local governments and other partners to coordinate efforts and mobilize actions to address drought-related issues.
The governor’s drought declaration authorizes state agencies to expedite water management tools to which users would not otherwise have access.
As state and local officials coordinate with federal partners, conditions will be closely monitored by the state’s natural resource and public safety agencies, including the Oregon Water Resources Department and the Oregon Office of Emergency Management.
Drought emergencies have also been declared in Klamath and Grant counties.

Less than eight months after Hurricane Harvey pelted the Texas Gulf Coast with torrential rainfall, drought has returned to Texas and other parts of the West, Southwest and Southeast, again forcing state governments to reckon with how to keep the water flowing.
Nearly a third of the continental U.S. is in drought, more than three times the coverage of a year ago.
And the specter of a drought-ridden summer has focused renewed urgency on conservation efforts, some of which would fundamentally alter Americans’ behavior in how they use water.
In California, for example, officials are considering rules to permanently ban water-wasting actions such as hosing off sidewalks and driveways, washing a vehicle with a hose that doesn’t have a shut-off valve, and irrigating ornamental turf on public street medians.
In Amarillo, Texas, the water department stresses conservation with the message “every drop counts,” and urges customers to do “at least one thing a day to save water.” Oklahoma City has a similar mantra.
To understand the potential dangers, U.S. officials could look to parched Cape Town, South Africa.
The city of 4 million spent months struggling to fend off Day Zero, when it was projected to become the first major urban center to run out of water.
Residents skimped on dishwashing and laundry, took minishowers and washed their hands with sanitizer.
The objective: to cut individual water consumption to 50 liters a day, or 13.2 gallons, far below the U.S. average of 80 to 100 gallons.
U.S. government and environmental experts generally agree that no major city is in imminent danger.

Hurford’s general sentiment about this year’s drought was shared by all who presented reports at the Ouray State of the Rivers meeting at the Ouray County 4H Event Center May 16.
As of April 1, Colorado’s snowpack was 68 percent of average and 64 percent of last year’s.
Data maps show that the April 1 snowpack was between 50 percent and 69 percent for Ouray and Montrose counties, and below 50 percent for San Miguel County.
Division 4, the eastern area around Gunnison, has the most snowpack; the San Juan Mountains have the least, with snowpack above Ridgway Reservoir at just 46 percent of average.
Storage levels across the whole state were 50 percent in 2002.
In 2018, storage levels are about 100 percent.
There’s not as much water as we would like to have, but we will be able to make a crop this year.” However, to ensure its downstream water users have enough water, the association in Montrose may have to put a call on water use later in the season, shutting headgates to irrigators upstream in Ouray County (who have junior water rights).
“Our concern is if we have a similar year (drought) next year, all bets would be off then.
That is when the Ouray County Water Users Association was founded.
…Currently, Ridgway Reservoir doesn’t help water users on Log Hill or on Dallas Creek.” With the drought conditions came concerns about wildfires, and Ouray and Montrose counties implemented Stage 1 Fire Restrictions on Monday.

Climatologists and other experts on Wednesday provided an update on the situation in the Four Corners region – where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet.
They say the area is among the hardest hit and there’s little relief expected, and even robust summer rains might not be enough to replenish the soil and ease the fire danger.
The region is dealing with exceptional drought – the worst category.
That has left farmers, ranchers and water planners bracing for a much different situation than just a year ago when only a fraction of the region was experiencing low levels of dryness.
“We’ve been on this pattern where conditions have dried out, we haven’t seen much relief through last summer or into the winter months and here we are going into the summer of 2018 with over two-thirds of the region already in drought,” he said.
The drought has hit the Colorado River hard.
In New Mexico, stretches of the Rio Grande – another one of North America’s longest rivers – have already gone dry as biologists have been forced to scoop up as many endangered Rio Grande silvery minnows as possible so they can be moved upstream.
The river this summer is expected to dry as far north as Albuquerque, New Mexico’s most populous city.
“While this case initially should have been resolved without filing a costly lawsuit, I am excited New Mexico will finally get to tell its unified story about how Texas and the United States have unfairly tried to scapegoat New Mexico,” Balderas said Wednesday.
Texas officials are reviewing New Mexico’s claims.

It’s a sight you don’t expect in Cape Town, where the city administration has threatened to turn off the taps because of prolonged, severe drought: children careening down gushing slides into pools of fresh water.
In Cape Town, some businesses that depend on water either are finding their own sources, like Water World, or are struggling to stay open, as the city endures one of the most serious droughts ever in South Africa.
Car washes go on At a filling station in a Cape Town suburb, police have arrived, threatening to shut down its car washing service.
But the owner tells a local news channel he has a license to wash cars using gray, or recycled, water.
“I find it extremely frustrating that legitimate businesses get continuously harassed in this manner, and nothing gets done about informal and illegal car washes blatantly using water in broad daylight,” the owner says.
Far from middle-class havens, in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha township, Phillip Tatsi, 26, and his fellow street-side car washers say they are making do.
“When the rain is raining, we fetch water and we wash cars, even taxis,” Tatsi says.
David’s current hustle is to fill as many discarded canisters as possible at a tap shared by hundreds of people in his community.
On a good day, David says, he makes 200 rand selling water.
At community water points across the city, residents voice disdain for water profiteers.

Oregon Gov.
Kate Brown declared a drought emergency Thursday in Harney County, bringing to three the total number of counties to receive a drought declaration in 2018.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, nearly all of southeast Oregon is experiencing moderate to severe drought.
Winter snowpack has completely vanished in the Harney Basin, and is rapidly diminishing across the rest of the state.
“To minimize the impacts of drought on the local economy and community, I’m directing state agencies to work with local and federal partners to provide assistance to Harney County,” she said.
County officials requested a drought declaration on May 14, citing the potential for widespread and severe damage to farming, ranching, natural resources and tourism.
The extended weather forecast also calls for higher-than-normal temperatures, and less-than-normal precipitation heading into summer.
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During the 7-day period ending Tuesday morning, areas of heavy to excessive rainfall provided widespread drought relief across the central and southern Atlantic Coast States and from Texas northward into Montana and the Dakotas.
Please note the wet weather pattern continued through the week; any rain that fell after 12z Tuesday (8 a.m., EDT) will be incorporated into the following week’s drought assessment.
The overall trend toward improving conditions in the south contrasting with increasingly dry weather in the far north continued, though some northerly areas benefited from locally heavy rain.
In southern Kansas, another week with moderate to locally heavy showers (1 to 3 inches, as high as 3.72 inches in Longton, KS) led to widespread reductions of drought intensity and coverage.
Nevertheless, 6-month precipitation in the state’s lingering Extreme Drought (D3) was less than half of normal, while the Exceptional Drought (D4) in the state’s southwestern corner stood at less than one third of normal over the same time period.
Moderate to heavy rainfall (locally more than 3 inches) in northeastern Colorado likewise trimmed the coverage of Abnormal Dryness (D0).
In southeastern Nebraska, increasingly dry conditions over the past 90 days (40-60 percent of normal) led to a modest increase of Moderate Drought (D1) southwest of Lincoln.
Farther north, sharply wetter conditions between Bismarck, ND, and Aberdeen, SD, (6.17 inches in Java, SD) resulted in a considerable reduction of D0.
Beneficial rain (1 to 2 inches) was also reported in northeastern Montana, where D0 was reduced accordingly.
Meanwhile, D1 and D2 were increased somewhat in North Dakota from Bismarck to the Canadian border, where 60-day rainfall shortfalls (locally less than 30 percent of normal) have added to the region’s lingering long-term drought.

The drought that’s parching parts of Canada’s agricultural heartland has canola growers worried that their crops may not have enough water to grow.
Canada is the world’s largest grower of canola, and while farmers can seed in dry conditions, they’ll still need moisture for the crops to grow, said Chuck Penner, the owner of LeftField Commodity Research in Winnipeg.
Huge swaths of Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan have received less than 40 per cent of the average rainfall totals since April 1, according to the country’s agriculture ministry.
While some southern areas may receive as much as 3.8 centimetres in the next two weeks, precipitation is expected to return to below-normal levels after that, said Joel Widenor, a meteorologist with Commodity Weather Group in Bethesda, Md.
Canadian canola farmers were already poised to seed fewer acres in 2018 amid lingering concerns about dryness.
Plantings will fall 7 per cent to 21.4 million acres, the smallest area in two years, Statistics Canada said in an April report.
Canola futures have gained 10 per cent this year amid weather concerns and tensions between the United States and China over soybeans.
The lack of rain is causing trouble in parts of Manitoba where topsoil moisture is ”hurting pretty bad,” said Dan Mazier, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers, an industry group that represents farmers.
In Saskatchewan, the majority of growing areas need rain to replenish topsoil as warm temperatures and strong winds continue to dry out fields, the province’s agriculture ministry said Thursday in a report.
Bloomberg News

Short-term dryness continued to develop over southern portions of Vermont and New Hampshire, with some locales reporting locally less than 50 percent-of-normal rainfall over the past 60 days; with sub-par rainfall again this past week, D0 (Abnormal Dryness) was added to capture the driest areas over the past three months.
While heavy rain was reported in the western Carolinas, the lingering Moderate Drought (D1) and Abnormal Dryness (D0) areas received more modest amounts of rain (1-4 inches), resulting in a 1-category reduction.
South Intensifying dryness from northeastern Texas to the central Gulf Coast contrasted with heavy rain and much-needed drought relief in western portions of the region.
Over the past 30 days, many of the newly-expanded D0 areas have reported less than 25 percent-of-normal rainfall (locally less than 10 percent) with deficits over the same period totaling 2.5 to 5 inches.
In northeastern Texas, locales from Dallas eastward have reported similar shortfalls over the past 30 days, with 60-day precipitation totaling less than 70 percent of normal.
Despite the beneficial rain, Severe (D2) to Exceptional (D4) Drought persisted over much of the southern High Plains, where 6-month precipitation has totaled locally less than 25 percent of normal.
Moderate to heavy rainfall (1-4 inches, locally more) led to widespread reductions in Abnormal Dryness (D0) in central Missouri, with a report of 5.52 inches in Appleton City (north of El Dorado Springs).
High Plains The overall trend toward improving conditions in the south contrasting with increasingly dry weather in the far north continued, though some northerly areas benefited from locally heavy rain.
In southeastern Nebraska, increasingly dry conditions over the past 90 days (40-60 percent of normal) led to a modest increase of Moderate Drought (D1) southwest of Lincoln.
Beneficial rain was reported during the period in northeastern portions of Montana and Colorado, resulting in reductions of Abnormal Dryness (D0) and as well as Moderate (D1) and Severe (D2) Drought.

TUCSON – The new drought stats are in & they don’t look good for the Grand Canyon State.
As of May 24th, 97% of Arizona is in severe drought.
Extreme drought now covers 73% of the state, which is up 10% in the last week.
16% of Arizona is classified under exceptional drought, which is the worst drought category.
Exceptional drought has increased 6% in the last week, covering an area stretching from far northeast Maricopa County to the Four Corners.
According to 4WARN Meteorologist Jeff Beamish, Tucson’s rainfall deficit dating back to October 1st has increased to 2.83".
May 23rd marked the 84th straight day without measurable rainfall in the Old Pueblo, which is the city’s longest dry streak since 2005.
Latest stats from NOAA indicate southern Arizona needs over a foot of rainfall between now & the end of September to eliminate the drought.
While the Climate Prediction Center is forecasting a slight chance for above average Monsoon rain, it’s highly unlikely 12"+ of rain will happen.
Dating back to 1895, Tucson has only recorded two Summer storm seasons with a foot or more of rainfall.