NIDIS and National Weather Service Revamp Drought Outlooks to be Clearer, More Usable
This year, NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) celebrates 20 years of advancing drought early warning and long-term drought resilience. Partnerships have been key to NIDIS’s success. NIDIS has been closely collaborating with the National Weather Service (NWS) to improve its drought outlook products and services to meet user requests for improved drought outlook graphics and new probabilistic drought outlook products. These efforts are grounded in both advancing drought prediction science and leveraging design and visualization social science.
Each month, the NWS issues monthly and seasonal U.S. drought outlooks. These forecasts support drought decision making and situational awareness for national, regional, and state governments and other stakeholders. The outlooks primarily support the agriculture, water resources, fire weather, and emergency management communities.
The current drought outlook maps highlight the change in drought category from the start to the end of the forecast period. These outlooks are deterministic, meaning they provide a single, direct forecast of future drought conditions—such as whether conditions will improve, persist, or worsen—based on expert forecaster assessment rather than a range of statistical probabilities.
On October 15, 2026, NWS transitioned updated monthly and seasonal U.S. drought outlooks into operations. Based on an extensive social science study and implemented after an open comment on an experimental version of the product this summer, the new drought outlooks display improves stakeholder usability, understanding, and decision-making. The updated maps feature a simplified color scheme, clearer legend categories, and less text, helping users quickly identify where drought is expected to change.
This redesign of the deterministic drought outlooks is one step toward an improved suite of drought outlook products. NIDIS and NWS are in the research and development stages of probabilistic drought outlooks (seasonal, monthly, and rapid onset), which will provide greater context on possible drought outcomes to inform decision-making. NWS forecasters are already experimenting with a probabilistic seasonal drought outlook developed by NWS.
For more information on the October 15 transition, view the outlook redesign web page.
