Drought Impacts
The impacts of drought vary between sectors of the community in both timing and severity. They are complex and can be categorized into three sectors: water supply; agriculture and commerce; and environment, public health, and safety sectors. The water supply sector encompasses urban and rural drinking water systems that are affected when a drought depletes ground water supplies due to reduced recharge from rainfall. The agriculture and commerce sector includes the reduction of crop yield and livestock sizes due to insufficient water supply for crop irrigation and maintenance of ground cover for grazing. The environmental, public health, and safety sector focuses on wildfires that are both detrimental to the forest ecosystem and hazardous to the public. It also includes the impact of desiccating streams, such as the reduction of instream habitats for native species. The National Drought Mitigation (NDMC) had developed tools to help the public and the scientific communtiy detect, record, and track drought occurrences and impacts nationwide. Those tools are available below.
Click to view the Drought Information Statement
Drought Impact Reporter
The Drought Impact Reporter is developed by the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) in response to the need for a national drought impact database for the United States. Information presented in the database are gathered from the media, government aganecies, scientific publications, and various other sources. The Drought Impact Reporter displays a map that represents all impact categories over a specified period of time at the national level, and states are shaded in colors based on the number of reported impacts in each county. Click on the map to view drought impact data at the state level.
Source: National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC)
TopHawaii Weekly Crop Weather Report
The USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service conducts surveys and prepares reports covering virtually every aspect of U.S. agriculture, from production and supply of food to changes in demographics of U.S. producers. The NASS utilizes data and statistics from the Census of Agriculture and produces a number reports that summarize the data for various agricultural goods at the U.S., state, and county levels.
In cooperation with the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture, NASS produces the Hawaii Weekly Crop Weather Report. This report provides a summary of the general weather conditions in each county in the State of Hawaii, and the effects of the current weather conditions on different crops. Included at the end of the report is rainfall data at selected National Weather Service rainfall stations.
Hawaii Weekly Crop Weather Report
Drought Monitor for Hawaii
Below is the U.S. Drought Monitor for the State of Hawaii. Click on the map to view other drought information specific to Hawaii.
