Utah’s Drought Roamed the West

In the parched expanse of the American West, where arid landscapes define much of the region's character, drought is an all-too-familiar foe. Looking at our landscape, while beautiful, it is clear that water is not abundant.

Utahns have borne the brunt of this extended drought, grappling with dwindling water supplies. The severity of the situation has prompted officials to issue dire warnings, urging conservation and water use restrictions to mitigate the crisis.

The astonishing truth is that droughts are not static phenomena confined to specific regions. Instead, they exhibit a remarkable propensity to meander and migrate over vast distances. In the case of Utah's protracted dry spell, I was surprised to find that the drought's epicenter has shifted over the years, traversing from California to Texas and beyond.

Examining data spanning multiple years gave me fascinating insight into this migratory pattern of drought.

Recent data shows the driest states to be

1. Nevada

2. Arizona

3. Wyoming

4. New Mexico

5. Montana

6. Utah

But in 2023 the list is reordered with

1. New Mexico

2. Arizona

3. Nevada

4. Utah

5. North Dakota

In 2020 you can see the dry patch has centered right over Utah and Nevada.

The US Drought Monitor website can be used to look at different years and see how the drought has moved as time passed.

I shouldn't have been surprised the weather is always represented as a moving system crawling across the map on the nightly news. And I'm not saying that we were intentionally misled, but I do feel like the message has been that the drought was consistent and localized in Utah and its sister states over the years.

We should also note that in the last two years rainfall has moved the west out of extreme drought status.