{"id":860438,"date":"2026-08-16T18:38:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T18:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/860438\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T18:38:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T18:38:34","slug":"how-experts-track-extreme-drought-across-canada-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/860438\/","title":{"rendered":"How experts track extreme drought across Canada and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drought is a sneaky hazard that affects everyone in some surprising ways.<\/p>\n

A sustained lack of precipitation can lead to food scarcity<\/a>, rising prices, water shortages<\/a>, and wildfires with impacts that extend far beyond the areas<\/a> immediately impacted by a major drought.<\/p>\n

Tracking these arid conditions is serious business, and it\u2019s a task taken up by experts across Canada and throughout North America on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

DON’T MISS: The world is officially in its water bankruptcy era<\/a><\/p>\n

The drought monitor reveals hard-hit areas<\/p>\n

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada releases the Canadian Drought Monitor<\/a> once per month to help officials and industries identify the extent and severity of unusually dry conditions from coast to coast.<\/p>\n

\"North<\/p>\n

Officials in the U.S. and Mexico also release drought monitor updates on a regular basis, providing a comprehensive picture of the drought situation across North America each month.<\/p>\n

All three drought monitors consist of five categories: abnormally dry (D0), moderate (D1), severe (D2), extreme (D3), and exceptional (D4).<\/p>\n

\"Drought<\/p>\n

Each category is successively more rare; most locations are abnormally dry once every couple of years, while extreme to exceptional droughts are usually generational events.<\/p>\n

One solid thunderstorm is capable of curing abnormally dry or moderate drought conditions, while an exceptional drought can take months of steady rains to resolve.<\/p>\n

Lower categories typically bring short-term effects to crops and grasslands<\/a>. Worse droughts tend to produce longer-term impacts, such as dwindling reservoirs<\/a> and harm to habitats.<\/p>\n

\"Canada<\/p>\n

RELATED: Multi-year droughts getting hotter, linger longer and causing more damage: Study<\/a><\/p>\n

A simple lack of rainfall isn\u2019t the only metric that determines drought. Experts assess plenty of different variables to build their monthly analyses and assign categories to each location.<\/p>\n

Temperature, precipitation, and streamflow data all play a significant role in determining whether or not a region is experiencing a drought. Several other metrics also factor into the equation, including satellite imagery to judge the greenness<\/a> and health of a region\u2019s vegetation.<\/p>\n

A blend of these factors is required to capture a complete picture of the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrought is a \u2018creeping phenomenon\u2019\u201d as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada puts it, adding that drought is \u201cdifficult to define and measure, slow to develop, continuous, cumulative, and long lasting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"August<\/p>\n

Some years are particularly brutal.<\/p>\n

One of Canada\u2019s worst and most widespread events occurred in 2023<\/a>, during which nearly three-quarters of the country saw abnormally dry or full-blown drought conditions by October.<\/p>\n

Severe drought or worse covered more than 46 per cent of the U.S. during a relentless spell of high heat and minimal precipitation in the summer of 2012.<\/p>\n

WATCH: Alberta announces $125M program to protect from drought and flood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drought is a sneaky hazard that affects everyone in some surprising ways. A sustained lack of precipitation can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,6091,295,11696,66],"class_list":["post-860438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-drought","tag-environment","tag-rain","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}