The drought monitor was updated with the start of February, and more than 97% of Virginia is abnormally dry, and almost half of the commonwealth is in a moderate drought. Most of our area is still in a moderate drought, and some parts of the state are even in a severe drought. We received just over half of the rainfall we normally receive in the month of January, and after starting the year with drought conditions carried over from 2017, we could be facing a serious drought this spring and summer. John Miller, with the Virginia Department of Forestry, said a drought like this is unusual in Virginia, especially because we normally recharge our ground water in the…

Above: Irrigation water runs along the dried-up ditch between the rice farms to provide water for the rice fields in Richvale, Calif., May 1, 2014. A U.S. Drought Monitor report released Thursday shows all of San Diego County is now in a moderate drought. The Category 1 declaration comes a year after water officials declared the region’s drought was over. According to the Drought Monitor, a “moderate drought” means ongoing dry conditions could cause damage to crops, and a possibility of water shortages could develop. Warm and dry conditions have dominated the region for the past six months, with the exception of one storm…

FARMINGTON — Drought conditions in San Juan County have worsened over the course of 2018, and short-term forecasts are not predicting any relief from the situation. Different drought indexes place the county in either moderate or severe drought. According to the Palmer index, which Farmington uses to monitor drought, the area is in a moderate drought. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the county is in a severe drought, and those conditions have become worse over the course of what has been an unseasonably dry and warm winter. While the drought conditions have worsened since the start of the year, officials say it is still too early to tell what that may mean for water and fire conditions for the rest of the year. Farmington Public Works director David Sypher said he is planning to give a presentation to the City Council during its 9 a.m. Feb. 20 work session about the city’s ordinances regarding drought. Sypher said the city has done what it can to prepare to meet demand if no significant moisture comes to the area in the upcoming months. “We’re hopeful that we’ll get a turnaround in the next month or two,” he said. Sypher said Farmington Lake, which stores the drinking water for the city of Farmington, is full, and the stream flow in the Animas River is good. (Photo: The Daily Times file…

California is rapidly plunging back into drought, with severe conditions now existing in Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles counties — home to one-fourth of the state’s population, a national drought monitor said Thursday. The weekly report released by the U.S. Drought Monitor, a project of government agencies and other partners, also shows 44 percent of the state is now considered to be in a moderate drought. It’s a dramatic jump from just last week, when the figure was 13 percent. “It’s not nearly where we’d like to be,” Frank Gehrke, a state official, acknowledged after separately carrying out manual measurements of winter snowfall in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which supplies water to millions of Californians in a good, wet year. Overall, the vital snowpack Thursday stood at less than a third of normal for the date. California lifted a drought state of emergency less than a year ago, ending cutbacks that at the peak of the drought mandated 25 percent conservation by cities and towns, devastated generations of native salmon and other wildlife, made household wells run dry in the state’s…