Weather Words: Drought

Drought may be a term you have heard quite often, but the definition of a drought is rather complex. While most things are measured by the presence of something, like rainfall, snow or winds, drought is measuring the absence of something - water.

The National Weather Service defines drought as, “A deficiency of moisture that results in adverse impacts on people, animals, or vegetation over a sizable area.”

But what can make measuring drought conditions challenging is that what might be a drought for one area, might be perfectly normal conditions for another. It widely varies from region to region - therefore, drought is very difficult to predict and monitor. In fact, according to drought.gov, in the early 1980s scientists found more than 150 different published definitions of drought - yikes!

One of the most notable droughts in recent years was the California drought that lasted three years from 2020 through 2022. A series of atmospheric rivers began moving through in 2022 that eventually brought an end to drought conditions.

While some droughts slowly creep up over time, there’s something called a “flash drought” that occurs when lack of rainfall, high temperatures and sunshine combine to result in a quick-developing drought.

This segment originally appeared in today's edition of the Morning Brief newsletter. Sign up here to get weekday updates from The Weather Channel and our meteorologists.

J​ennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world's biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.