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Oct 11

News & Events

Southwest Drought Briefing: October 11, 2022

October 11, 2022

1:00 pm - 1:35 pm

MDT

The Southwest is in continuing drought. This webinar looked at current and forecast drought conditions for Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah. It also highlighted a recent research project from Utah State University that used Twitter to track and predict changing drought conditions.

For more information, please contact Joel Lisonbee (joel.lisonbee@noaa.gov) or Emile Elias (emile.elias@usda.gov).

0:00

Welcome to the Southwest Drought Update

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

Welcome to the October 2022 Southwest Drought Briefing.
Learn more about the Southwest Drought Learning Network.
Acknowledgment of land.
View past webinar recordings at drought.gov/webinars.
Introduction of the speakers:
- Jon Meyer, Assistant State Climatologist, Utah Climate Center, Utah State University
- Simon Wang, Professor of Climate, Utah State University

3:27

Current Conditions and Drought Outlook

Speaker: Jon Meyer | Utah Assistant State Climatologist, Utah Climate Center, Utah State University

Active and widespread monsoon rains have improved the regional short-term drought conditions.
Status quo remains for the region’s long-term drought concerns (neither reduced nor exacerbated).
Positives to start the 2023 Water Year:
- Limited evaporative demand through fall transition.
- Soil moisture is high leading to improved spring streamflow efficiency.
- Winter agricultural drought pressures have relaxed in many areas of the Southwest.
Negatives looking forward:
- Third year of lowered expectations for winter season snowpack.
- Snowpack outlook is unlikely to begin meaningful drought improvements to groundwater and reservoirs.

20:12

Feasibility of Adding Twitter Data to Aid Drought Depiction

Speaker: Simon Wang | Professor of Climate, Utah State University

A sentiment analysis of Twitter data can lead to providing some indication of drought evolution in a region.
In a case study in Colorado’s 2020-2021 drought, sentiment analysis with a machine learning model successfully predicted the change in drought conditions a few weeks in advance.
Future work includes expanding this research to cover the western U.S.

31:21

Questions & Answers

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