All of a Sudden, There’s Drought Everywhere

Of all the eerie paradoxes of climate change, one of the most unsettling has got to be Christmas shopping in wildfire smoke.

This weekend, ice skaters seeking early holiday cheer in New York’s Bryant Park did so not to the usual scent of honey-roasted nuts but to the reek of brush fires burning in New Jersey, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. When workers hoisted the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree into place on Saturday, they did so in a strange golden wash of sunlight defused through smoke. In Queens, I received an air quality warning while deleting early Black Friday emails from my phone.

The driest October in New York history turned the region into a tinderbox that has produced a whopping 600 fires in the past month. After one erupted in Prospect Park on Friday, the city banned outdoor grilling and told nearby residents to keep their windows closed. An 18-year-old New York State Parks employee died over the weekend while clearing dry underbrush to help fight the 3,000-acre Jennings Creek Fire in the Hudson Valley. And when rain finally did arrive Sunday evening, it marked the first measurable precipitation in the tri-state area since late September — but the 0.18 inches wasn’t enough to alleviate the 6- to 7-inch deficit that has built up over the past two months, city officials have asked New Yorkers “not to flush unnecessarily.”

New Yorkers will be piqued to learn their experience isn’t singular. The U.S. Drought Monitor’s most recent report found that as of the first week of November, every state except Alaska was experiencing “moderate drought” conditions or worse — the greatest number since the Monitor’s record-keeping began.

Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center, which runs the Monitor, told me it’s understandable to wonder where all the rain has suddenly gone. “Three months ago, we only had a little over 21% of the country in drought, and in three months, that’s jumped to just under 52%,” he said.

Much of the country has been warmer than usual since the start of fall, with some areas 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit above average “consistently,” Fuchs went on. “I’m in Nebraska, so typically in the fall, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, it’s going to be cool in the morning, I’ll grab a jacket, and maybe some nice sun in the afternoon will warm it up, and then it’s cool in the evenings.’ And a lot of the country has not had that. They’ve really had an extended summer.” Those increased temperatures have also meant increased moisture loss, which is what triggers a formal drought designation.

But while 2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record, the United States is not, in fact, in one giant drought. Rather, “there are different factors” driving several droughts happening simultaneously, Fuchs explained. “It’s not all tied to the same mechanism.”

In the Northeast, for example, the drought is linked to eastward-tracking storms dissipating before they reach the region, as well as activity in the tropics during late September and October, which robbed the atmosphere of moisture and contributed to “a stronger upper high-pressure area dominant over the Ohio Valley, Midwest, Great Lakes,” Paul Pastelok, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, wrote to me in an email on Friday. That high-pressure area has acted “like a block to prevent any significant precipitation for weeks in these areas.” It’s also why drought experts expect “potential improvement” in the coming weeks.

There are severe drought conditions across the Southeast, too, which may be a surprise if flooding from Hurricane Helene is still top of mind. But much of that water quickly ran off into streams, rivers, and the ocean, and “since then, there has not been a lot of rain in this area, and the top soil has dried out,” Pastelok said. Other areas experiencing drought include the Southwest, where a mild summer monsoon season has extended emergency declarations, and the central and northern Plains, which have been dry since early September and where drought conditions are expected to last through at least the early winter. Reservoirs in California, meanwhile, are in “great shape” after last winter’s snows; still, due to “months without rain in many areas, the topsoil has dried out, resulting in an abnormal dryness level — a lower category of drought,” Pastelok said.

Brett Anderson, another senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, pointed out that drought is a natural part of the climate cycle, and reassured me, “This is not unprecedented.” He added that there is “no real trend in U.S. drought severity over the past 25 years.”

That doesn’t mean these droughts don’t bear signs of climate change. Fuchs noted that “rapid swings from very wet conditions to very dry conditions, right on top of each other,” is a pattern associated with global warming, and one that can be seen both in the post-Helene dry spell in the Southwest and the deluge last week that broke up a drought in Oklahoma and Missouri, which are having some of their wettest Novembers on record. Anderson also noted that the unusual warmth in many parts of the U.S. has led to “much higher evaporation rates compared to normal,” which also feeds the development of droughts.

As for New York City — again under a red flag warning, this time through Tuesday — there is no rain in the forecast through at least next weekend. If you were looking for a beautiful bluebird day to go ice skating (and can ignore that it’s almost 70 degrees out), then now’s your chance.