The US Drought Monitor shows northwestern Colorado in extreme drought, despite the fact that they have had dozens of snowstorms and the snowpack in the mountains is normal .
Northeastern Wyoming has more than 200% of normal snowpack, and is listed as being under extreme drought.
At some point they are going to have to accept the fact that the permanent drought of 2012 is over.
There is no doubt the US Drought Monitor has an agenda and is not reporting empirical facts.
I started monitoring US rainfall closely after a visit to Texas in 2011. There are very small areas within the US, such as south Texas and maybe New Mexico that probably are in severe drought, but no way other areas like Colorado, Wyoming, or Minnesota have much real drought today. Nebraska and Kansas might be behind a little, but after a week where snow and rainfall equals close to the expected monthly total for those areas, the US Drought Monitor does not lower the drought level for those areas.
I don’t know the mathematical models used by the US Drought Monitor, but something is very off with that website — thanks for pointing it out (no one else seems to be calling them on it).
New Mexico is definitely in severe drought. Even the cactus are all withered up and decaying. Never seen anything like it. Bone dry out there.
Wait till the snowpack melts. They’ll be complaining of floods caused by CAGW.
When the US has the 8th largest harvest on record in the midst of the extreme drought of 2012, you can be sure that government scientists have been legally smoking something, in Colorado.
With all the rain and snow of late, it seems since the ENSO went slightly positive, it is hard to believe they are still pushing the drought story. I record precip. and this year is no worse than last year, and we are about normal for western Colorado.
Rapid City, SD is supposedy experiencing drought after having received a record 36″ of snow in April with more on the way. Duluth, MN is supposedly experiencing drought after obliterating their sll time monthly record, with 42″ inches of snow so far and more on the way. They currently have 28″ of snow on the ground, with up to 3 feet in the surrounding area.
We have joked about droughtflood, but that is exactly what is going to happen once all that snow melts.
I’d love to take the dogs for a hike in the extreme drought, but there is way too much snow and mud.
Yeah, here in MN there’s no drought. Far from it. Unless they don’t count the snow until it melts.
I figured out their means of determining drought. If Texas was 22 inches short in a year’s rainfall, they would not consider the drought over until the state had received normal rain PLUS and extra 22 inches. In other words, they insist on flooding to stop a drought, rather than simply that a drought is over when the rain average returns to normal.