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Feb 21

News & Events

Southwest Drought Briefing: February 21, 2023

February 21, 2023

1:00 pm - 1:35 pm

MST

Short-term drought in the Southwest has greatly improved while long-term drought continues. This webinar looked at current and forecast drought conditions for Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. The webinar also included a presentation on the USGS VisLab, which creates powerful visualization of water science. This webinar highlighted some of the expertise and tools produced there, specifically the USGS Snow-to-Flow data visualization tool.

For more information, please contact Joel Lisonbee (joel.lisonbee@noaa.gov).

Drought conditions causing low levels in the Colorado River. Credit: GoodFocused, Shutterstock.

January 24, 2023

Special Edition Drought Status Update for the Western United States

0:00

Welcome to the Southwest Drought Briefing

Speaker: Joel Lisonbee | NOAA/National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)

Welcome to the February 2023 Southwest Drought Briefing.
Learn more about the Southwest Drought Learning Network.
View past webinar recordings at drought.gov/webinars.
Introducing the speakers:
- Curtis Riganti, National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
- Cee Nell, VisLab lead at the United States Geological Survey (USGS)

4:08

Current Conditions and Drought Outlook

Speaker: Curtis Riganti | National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Significant improvements have occurred to the short-term drought situation in the Southwest in the last 6 to 8 weeks. All drought in the region now is strictly long-term.
Despite the improvements and good current snowpack, significant long-term precipitation deficits, going back 3-5 years, still exist in many areas.
Outlooks for the next couple of weeks favor above-normal precipitation, though outlooks for March-May from CPC favor near or below-normal precipitation for most areas.

14:50

Introduction to the USGS VisLab: Water Data Visualisation processes and tools

Speaker: Cee Nell | VisLab lead, USGS

The Objective of the USGS Water Data Visualisation Team is to connect USGS water science to non-technical audiences.
VisLab provides interactive data visualizations, for example:
- The Water Cycle demonstrates how humans interact with the water cycle.
- From Snow to Flow provides a plain-language explanation of the complexities of snow melt dynamics and how it relates to streamflow and engages water audiences with snow hydrology research at USGS.