A map released by the U.S. Drought Monitor on March 17 shows the bulk of the state somewhere between severe drought to extreme and exceptional drought. A new paper from the Proceedings of the National Academic of Sciences suggests these conditions are now typical.
The authors of the paper say that any recovery from the current drought will result in a drier state than we’ve previously known.
According to the Fifth Oregon Climate Assessment, more than a third of the state has been in severe drought since 2000. The assessment – published by the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University – identifies climate trends across Oregon, like water movement and extreme heat.
Erica Fleishman is director of the Institute and a professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. Fleishman says: “What we thought of as ‘normal’ water availability 50 years ago is just not something that we can consider normal anymore.”
By Grace Miller
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