Hot Off The Press

TWDB Drought Report for April 10, 2015

i Apr 10th No Comments by

As of Thursday, statewide drought and reservoir conditions are relatively unchanged over the past week with a slight squeak toward continuing improvement. However, drought conditions remain or worsened and reservoir levels decreased in West Texas up through the Panhandle. Rains over the weekend are expected to bring continued state-wide improvements.

Some notes from Dr. Wentzel:


·         The most recent map from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows little change in the last week. Small areas in central and west Texas had some improvement while areas in the Panhandle degraded. The area of the state experiencing no drought impacts (Nothing) climbed to more than 51% but Exceptional (D4) Drought was up more than ½ a percentage point. The area of the state in Moderate (D1) or worse drought was down slightly to about 36.4 percent.
·         The gain in statewide reservoir conservation storage has continued to slow, up only 35,000 acre-feet (or about 0.1 percentage points) in the last week. That still extends to 7 straight weeks our current run of improvements in statewide reservoir conditions. Current storage is 5 percentage points better than this time last year, but still about 13 percentage points below what is considered normal for this time of year.
·         As of Thursday, April 9th, conservation storage was up in 1, unchanged in 4, and down in 4 of 9 climate regions with reservoirs across the state. The only gain this week was in the North Central region, up 0.3 percentage points. The Trans Pecos had the largest decline, down 1.4 percentage points. All other changes were 0.3 percentage points or less.
·         Conservation storage (as a percentage of capacity) increased in 8 of the 20 municipal reservoir systems that we track across the state, remained unchanged in 5, and decreased in 7. Nacogdoches had the largest gain, up 1.6 percentage points. Three other systems (El Paso, Dallas, and Waco) were up at least ½ a percentage point. Corpus Christi and Beaumont/Port Arthur had the largest decreases, each down 0.2 percentage points.
·         The Drought Outlook from the National Weather Service for April remains the same as last week. It anticipates little change for Texas with only small areas of drought removal in Central and North Central Texas and no new areas of drought development. Next week, the Weather Service will be releasing a seasonal drought outlook for expected conditions through the end of July.

Download the report.

Comments