BOULDER CITY, Nev. (KTNV) — Every Thursday, the U.S. Drought Monitor releases a drought map. For Nevada, the latest map shows a stark difference from just seven months ago. The current drought conditions measure at 22.93 percent.
"For the start of the water year, 100 percent of the state was in drought," said Desert Research Institute climatologist David Simeral. "So big improvement that's occurred this winter."
Simeral is one of 12 authors of the U.S. Drought Monitor, and the only one from the west.
He said there are a lot of aspects to consider when drafting a map.
"Some folks saying, you know, maybe just looking at precipitation, they'll look at things in the shorter term, but we're taking a look at a wide variety of different indicators," said Simeral. "From precipitation, looking at temperature, looking at stream flows, looking at soil moisture, the vegetation health. It helps me to paint a picture with more confidence as to what's happening."
Generally speaking, Simeral said Nevada has been in a long period of drought.
"It's been a drying trend that's been going on from year to year," said Simeral. "We had a longer term drought that occurred back in the early 2010's and it lasted about five years, and we've intermittently gone in and out of drought since then."
Simeral said the last three years followed a La Nina cycle, which means the weather patterns tend to be drier along the southwestern region. But this past winter was abnormal.
"This year's La Nina event, which as you know, tends to be drier in the southern tier of the western U.S. and it pretty much did the opposite," said Simeral. "And it ended up, you know, for many parts of the southern tier of the region was very wet. I mean, there was some record snowfall in areas."
Next season, we're expected to head into El Nino cycle, which is good news for our region, according to Simeral. But like what we saw this year, the weather patterns could be unexpected.
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"The southwest tends to be wetter during the winters," said Simeral. "We can look at what the long term patterns look like, but that's no guarantee of how things are going to going to play out moving forward."
Simeral said the monsoonal season in the summer may also provide some drought relief.
"Moving into the monsoon season, you know, the good thing about your particular location as compared to other parts of the state and Nevada is that you have more well down in southern Nevada and then along the eastern part of Nevada, like east central and part of the state, they have a good influence," said Simeral. "There is potential for improvement in Clark County during the summer months. But as you know, monsoon can be rather spotty in terms of the thunderstorms that you get."
In terms of getting Lake Mead levels to return to normal, Simeral said we will need four to five consecutive years of above average precipitation.
"In terms of both Lake Mead and Lake Powell on the Colorado River system, the current status in terms of their reservoir levels is definitely a longer term situation to we're looking at multiple decades where the lake has drawn down," said Simeral. "Despite the really great year we've had in the upper Colorado River basin, it's going to take multiple years."
