Your Weather, 2026

[ducks4you]

I live around the middle of the "red zone."
"As of February 10, 2026 approximately 70% (40292 square miles) of Illinois is under drought conditions and 21% (12153 square miles) is Abnormally dry."
I hope to treat water this year as if I live in AZ!, including using all of the water that my garage dehumidifier sucks up for gardening, instead of pouring it outside of the garage, like usual.

| U.S. Drought Monitor

droughtmonitor.unl.edu

 

[Dahlia]

We just finished with a bitter Northerly. It's been so cold and breezy I haven't wanted to spend much time outside. Today will be much warmer again - up to 50! Probably lots of rain though. That's ok. I'm going to stay home and cook a roast.

 

[digitS']

It's as though we are on our way to having had the driest Summer followed by the warmest Winter.

I hope to treat water this year as if I live in AZ!

That's it, @ducks4you. I feel like I am now living somewhere in southern Arizona. Of course, it isn't that hot and dry here.

Looking at the WS information on averages: it shows that Springfield had its driest year in 1940 with just over 20 inches. Drought is measured as a current comparison with historical averages. Twenty inches would be our yearly average but most of that would be in the form of snow. That works out because of the nearby mountains. Snow melt continues for months into the growing season.

 

[Shades-of-Oregon]

In the PNW in one day we had so much snow that the roads were closed to the ski resorts until the sand trucks could clear the roads. Many mountain ranges received well over 12-20” or more of snow in a 24 hour period. We had fallen way behind the snow averages so far this season and hoping to catch up with the average snow melt needed to be sufficient enough to fill the rivers and water sheds to avoid drought conditions.

 

[SPedigrees]

Winter Storm Hernando, oh joy, NOT! I have pressing errands in town. Was planning to make the trip last Friday when snow made travel a bad idea. So I postponed the excursion to Monday (tomorrow), and now the whole Northeast it seems, is shut down. After Hernando has done its thing, we are slated to get another snow storm on Wed and Thurs. I may never be able to leave here!

 

[ninnymary]

After rains and freezing for us temperatures it was so warm and nice today! Really enjoyed my walk this morning and decided to take another one this afternoon. Tomorrow will be nice at 65* but then more rain on Tuesday and Wednesday ugh. But looking forward to Thursday and Friday at 68.

Mary

 

[flowerbug]

... Many mountain ranges received well over 12-20” or more of snow in a 24 hour period. We had fallen way behind the snow averages so far this season and hoping to catch up with the average snow melt needed to be sufficient enough to fill the rivers and water sheds to avoid drought conditions.

it's a welcome bump to the snowpacks in several areas out there.

i watch the levels fairly regularly through the season because so many depend upon them and i have relatives out that way and it gives us something to chatter about.

the Colorado River Basin is the one that is the most radically variable and they are having a tough time the past 20 years with Lake Powell and Lake Mead both getting pretty low.

the Operating Guidelines are supposed to have been updated recently but the 7 states have not managed to do that so the Federal gov't and Bureau of Reclamation will impose some limits. unfortunately when they came up with the Colorado River Compact in the 1920s they based it upon flawed assumptions (it was a wet period) about how much water the basin could provide. this shortcoming was made clear in some reports that some scientists had made but those numbers were ignored and they used numbers for a few million acre feet more instead - which worked ok as long as there was a surplus in the system, but in recent years it has been a dry spell of the sort they've not seen in 1200 or more years (based upon tree ring data) so it's not working well now. unfortunately the laws of the river are also based upon prior appropriation rights of first use going back several hundred years but also we have native tribes that have claims which have not been developed or made clear yet in the laws as to how much and where so it's a mess because those claims are previous in history and on the books as being required.

this will likely end up in courts for the tune of many millions of dollars and a lot of wasted time and effort.

then to make things even messier you have the various salt lakes and drying salt pans getting worse from lack of water and that dust is getting around and causing problems (to the tune of potential billions of dollars to even begin to deal with).

it's a very complicated issue with a lot of angles and demands. that's what makes it interesting is to see how it does or doesn't get addressed and who is actively working to make the situation even worse.

California has at least been trying to deal with their groundwater issues in the past 10-15 years and they are making progress but it is a tough road as it means bringing their ground water pumping in balance with the recharge rate.

Arizona was doing well as they were able to take extra water when it was available and put it in the ground but now that extra isn't available any more and they're now having to pump more of that (at a rate above what they can sustain so eventually this will have to come to an end).

Utah for some odd reasons is even further behind CA and AZ, but they too are now forced to be more serious about it with the water level of The Great Salt lake falling far enough to where the ecosystem is collapsing and the dust is flying.

they all have to make tough choices about agricultural use and fallowing lands when there isn't enough water to go around.

in the case of southern CA and The Salton Sea when they fallow lands in that area it means even less water ends up flowing into that lake so it receeds even faster - but they also made that situation a lot worse by doing some water switching around and never compensated the lake at all for that amount of water. it's simply a boneheaded thing to do and the chickens are coming home to roost in a rather tough way (millions of $ spent and more to come). that's one thing about reality - it doesn't care what your intentions are it will respond to what you actually do.

Mono Lake is one interesting place where the citizens fought hard enough to get some controls put into place and some legal decisions made to force the draining of their fresh water away to be brough more in line with what is actually available but the ruling was not enforced well enough to get them back up to where they should be by now and that is a continual fight. hopefully with some recent decisions to recycle more LA water they will get what they were judged to be enough to return their water level back to something more healthy. maybe five more years before we see that level get a real definite bump (unless we get a few really good water years back to back).

ok, well, i've gone on enough, but there's so many more entangled water systems and issues out there in the west... i am able to watch from a different area in the east in a state that is mostly surrounded by water - but in some places even our situation is abused, overdrawn or polluted.

the snow we had last night all pretty much melted today. it will be frozen again tonight and some snow chance for this coming morning but i don't expect much snow to stay for long. we also have some warmer days in the forecast again this week and perhaps some rain too.

 

[Dahlia]

After rains and freezing for us temperatures it was so warm and nice today! Really enjoyed my walk this morning and decided to take another one this afternoon. Tomorrow will be nice at 65* but then more rain on Tuesday and Wednesday ugh. But looking forward to Thursday and Friday at 68.

Mary

Makes me miss CA and the warm, sunny weather!