Mid-Atlantic Drought Early Warning System (DEWS) Strategic Planning Meeting
NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), along with Federal, tribal, state, regional, and local partners in the Mid-Atlantic will host a kick-off strategic planning meeting to launch the Mid-Atlantic Drought Early Warning System on Thursday, April 9, 2026 at U.S. Geological Survey’s Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center in Catonsville, Maryland.
The purpose of this meeting is to bring together key stakeholders from across Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to begin strategic planning for a Mid-Atlantic Drought Early Warning System that develops and delivers usable, reliable, and timely drought and water-related information to the region.
In 2024, heat and a lack of rainfall led to widespread drought across Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. For some locations, the 2024-2025 drought was the worst the region had experienced in more than two decades. Significant impacts were felt across both natural and managed landscapes, as well as multiple sectors, including agriculture, mining, public health, and water utilities. Parts of the region remain in drought in Winter 2026.
In response to these conditions and impacts, NIDIS partnered with the Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC) and other Federal and state agency partners and watershed organizations across the Mid-Atlantic to host a special drought webinar in September 2024 and a series of listening sessions in February/March 2025 with regional, state, and local partners to discuss drought conditions in the region, impacts of the drought, response and preparedness resources, outlooks for the coming months, and priorities towards building earlier drought warnings and long-term drought resilience. Feedback from these listening sessions was captured in the 2024-2025 Mid-Atlantic Drought Assessment released in September 2025.
What we heard from these stakeholder-driven events was clear: building drought early warning capacity in the Mid-Atlantic region is vital to proactively managing drought risk and building resilience to future drought and extreme weather events. Please join NIDIS, NRCC, state climatologists, and watershed organizations in the Mid-Atlantic Region, and others at the Mid-Atlantic Drought Early Warning System (DEWS) Strategic Planning Meeting on April 9.
Registration
There is no registration fee to attend this meeting.
Please register by March 11, 2026 so that we may adequately plan for parking and meeting accommodations with our partners. Once the meeting room capacity has been reached, virtual attendance will remain an option but will only offer limited participation capabilities.
For more information, please contact Elizabeth Ossowski.
