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Why Economic Developers Should Add Drought Trends to Their Data Toolkit

September 16, 2026 John Walker

Very low water levels at the Hoover Dam in NevadaEconomic developers track a wide range of indicators to understand changing conditions and emerging opportunities. Labor force participation, unemployment, housing activity, business formation, and real estate trends all help communities identify challenges before they become problems and opportunities before they are widely recognized.

Water resource conditions rarely receive the same attention, but with the local and regional impacts of extreme temperatures and the water needs of data centers and other industries increasingly making headlines, it probably should.

Overlooking water may leave communities unaware of an important piece of the economic landscape. Water availability influences:

  • Agriculture
  • Manufacturing
  • Energy production
  • Tourism
  • Recreation
  • Public infrastructure systems

As communities face increasing pressures to improve resilience, modernize infrastructure, and compete for investment, understanding changes in water conditions can provide valuable context for decision-making.

The US Drought Monitor offers an easily accessible way to do just that. Produced jointly by the National Drought Mitigation Center, USDA, and NOAA, the platform combines multiple environmental indicators into a nationally consistent drought classification system with weekly updates. In addition to maps, users can access historical trends, downloadable tables, GIS files, county-level detail, and drought outlook information.

More importantly, the US Drought Monitor functions much like the other economic indicators practitioners already use. It provides a consistent framework for monitoring an important condition over time and identifying meaningful changes as they occur.

Drought Conditions in the Continental US as of August 25, 2026
Source: US Drought MonitorA map of the contiguous United States featuring state boundaries and major river lines. Color shading indicates regional drought intensity across the nation, including no drought, abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought, and exceptional drought. Regional Analysis: Eastern US and Midwest: Large portions of the East Coast, Mid-Atlantic, Great Lakes, and Upper Midwest are largely clear of drought with only a few areas of "abnormally dry" conditions. Minor areas of moderate drought appear along parts of the East Coast. Central and Southern Plains: Heavy concentration of high-severity drought. Extensive regions in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, and Colorado display large areas of extreme drought with patches of exceptional drought conditions. Mountain West and Southwest: Moderate to severe drought conditions dominate. Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming feature widespread areas of severe and extreme drought. Pacific Northwest: Washington, Oregon, and Idaho show significant areas of severe and extreme drought, particularly in eastern Washington, Oregon, and southern Idaho. California: Coastal and northern areas feature mostly abnormally dry conditions and moderate drought, while interior sections transition into severe drought.The US Drought Monitor provides weekly assessments of drought conditions at national, regional, state, and county scales.

Water Is Economic Infrastructure

Communities invest enormous effort into planning for transportation, broadband, utilities, housing, and workforce development because those assets support economic growth. Water resources play a similarly important role.

Agricultural producers depend on reliable water supplies. Manufacturers often require significant amounts of water for production. Energy generation relies on water resources for cooling and hydropower. Tech industries, including data centers and semiconductor chip fabrication plants, consume hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons of water daily. Meanwhile, outdoor recreation economies depend on healthy rivers, lakes, forests, and snowpack conditions.

Economic developers working in agricultural regions may monitor drought conditions, given their influence on crop production, while communities pursuing data centers, food processing, or advanced manufacturing projects may find value in understanding longer-term water availability trends.

The US Drought Monitor allows practitioners to track changing conditions across these sectors through a simple, easy-to-understand framework.

Unlike many environmental datasets, this platform does not require specialized expertise to interpret. The drought categories condense a wide range of underlying conditions into a format that communities can easily understand and monitor consistently over time.

For communities evaluating infrastructure investments or discussing long-term resource needs, the US Drought Monitor offers a practical starting point for understanding water-related conditions.

National maps provided by the service put local conditions in a broader context, allowing economic developers to quickly determine whether drought conditions are a localized challenge or part of a larger regional pattern affecting competitors, suppliers, customers, or critical infrastructure systems.

Historical Drought Trends Help Build Economic Resilience

As communities face a growing range of economic, environmental, and infrastructure-related disruptions, economic developers increasingly focus on resilience. For communities seeking to anticipate and prepare for these challenges, historical trend data may be the US Drought Monitor’s most valuable feature.A stacked area chart titled "Continental US Drought Intensity, June 2024-September 2026" showing the percentage of the continental United States affected by varying levels of drought over time. The source is cited as the US Drought Monitor. Vertical Axis (Y-axis): Represents percentage, ranging from 0.00% to 100.00% in 20.00% increments. Horizontal Axis (X-axis): Represents dates from June 1, 2024 to September 1, 2026. Key date markers include June 1, 2024, August 31, 2024, November 30, 2024, March 1, 2025, June 1, 2025, August 31, 2025, November 30, 2025, March 2, 2026, June 1, 2026, and September 1, 2026. Drought intensity categories include: 1. No drought or abnormal dryness 2. Abnormally dry 3. Moderate drought 4. Severe drought 5. Extreme drought 6. Exceptional drought Data Trends Description: June 2024 to Late 2024: The total land area that experienced at least abnormally dry conditions rises from approximately 25% in June 2024 to a peak of nearly 88% around October–November 2024. Moderate, severe, and extreme drought levels expand significantly during this peak. Early 2025 to Mid 2025: Total affected area decreases, dropping to a low of approximately 45% in June 2025. Late 2025 to Early 2026: Affected area increases again, fluctuating between 70% and 80% through mid-2026. Mid-2026 Trends: The higher-severity drought categories expand substantially. Severe drought covers around 30% of the land area, while extreme drought spikes to nearly 20% between March 2026 and June 2026. A small area of exceptional drought appears at the base of the graph starting in early 2026. September 2026: Total affected area experiencing abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, and extreme drought stands at approximately 78%, with abnormally dry conditions making up the largest top layer, followed by sizeable bands of moderate, severe, and extreme drought.

Historical drought trends show how the share of US land area experiencing drought conditions has changed over time.

Overview: An image of a data table titled "Percent Area in U.S. Drought Monitor Categories" showing annual drought statistics from 2016 through 2026 YTD. The table contains eight columns reading from left to right: an unlabeled column for the Year, None, Abnormally Dry, Moderate Drought, Severe Drought, Extreme Drought, Exceptional Drought, and Drought Severity and Coverage Index (DSCI). Footnotes and Sources: A note states that conditions are as of August 25, 2026. The source is listed as droughtmonitor.unl.edu. National Drought Area Percentages by Year: For the year 2026, the percentages are None: 26.7, Abnormally Dry: 20.3, Moderate Drought: 22.4, Severe Drought: 19.9, Extreme Drought: 9.6, and Exceptional Drought: 1.1. It has a DSCI of 168.7. For the year 2025, the percentages are None: 39.4, Abnormally Dry: 22.4, Moderate Drought: 19.8, Severe Drought: 12.5, Extreme Drought: 5.2, and Exceptional Drought: 0.8. It has a DSCI of 124.1. For the year 2024, the percentages are None: 46.0, Abnormally Dry: 26.7, Moderate Drought: 17.3, Severe Drought: 7.4, Extreme Drought: 2.3, and Exceptional Drought: 0.3. It has a DSCI of 94.1. For the year 2023, the percentages are None: 46.2, Abnormally Dry: 20.7, Moderate Drought: 16.8, Severe Drought: 10.3, Extreme Drought: 4.5, and Exceptional Drought: 1.6. It has a DSCI of 111.1. For the year 2022, the percentages are None: 29.2, Abnormally Dry: 17.3, Moderate Drought: 18.0, Severe Drought: 20.1, Extreme Drought: 12.4, and Exceptional Drought: 3.0. It has a DSCI of 178.3. For the year 2021, the percentages are None: 37.7, Abnormally Dry: 15.1, Moderate Drought: 13.3, Severe Drought: 12.8, Extreme Drought: 13.0, and Exceptional Drought: 8.1. It has a DSCI of 172.3. For the year 2020, the percentages are None: 54.9, Abnormally Dry: 16.8, Moderate Drought: 13.1, Severe Drought: 8.2, Extreme Drought: 5.4, and Exceptional Drought: 1.6. It has a DSCI of 97.1. For the year 2019, the percentages are None: 76.4, Abnormally Dry: 13.2, Moderate Drought: 6.9, Severe Drought: 2.9, Extreme Drought: 0.5, and Exceptional Drought: 0.1. It has a DSCI of 38.0. For the year 2018, the percentages are None: 52.0, Abnormally Dry: 18.6, Moderate Drought: 13.9, Severe Drought: 9.4, Extreme Drought: 4.9, and Exceptional Drought 1.2. It has a DSCI of 100.2. For the year 2017, the percentages are None: 68.2, Abnormally Dry: 18.7, Moderate Drought: 9.2, Severe Drought: 2.8, Extreme Drought: 1.0, and Exceptional Drought: 0.2. It has a DSCI of 50.2. For the year 2016, the percentages are None: 58.8, Abnormally Dry: 22.2, Moderate Drought: 10.9, Severe Drought: 4.3, Extreme Drought: 2.2, and Exceptional Drought: 1.6. It has a DSCI of 73.6. While the platform’s weekly maps may draw initial users’ attention, it is the time-series data that provides a deeper context by showing how conditions evolve over months and years. Users can monitor changes in the percentage of land area affected by different drought categories and examine whether conditions are becoming more or less prevalent over time. It is this type of insight that helps move the understanding beyond weather and into planning.

Communities routinely examine trends in employment, wages, population growth, and housing production because those metrics help guide economic development strategies. Drought trends can provide similar value by highlighting environmental conditions that may influence local industries and infrastructure systems.

Communities preparing Comprehensive Economic Development Strategies (CEDS), hazard mitigation plans, capital improvement programs, or business continuity initiatives may find drought data particularly useful. Planners do not need to predict future conditions with certainty. Instead, they can use historical trends to recognize recurring patterns, identify vulnerabilities, and monitor conditions that warrant additional attention.

From this perspective, the US Drought Monitor is as much an economic resilience tool as an environmental one.

Water Availability May Influence Future Competitiveness

Communities have long competed on factors such as workforce availability, transportation access, utility capacity, tax structures, and development-ready sites, and these considerations remain central assets to a community. Looking ahead, water availability will increasingly shape conversations around infrastructure capacity, operational reliability, and long-term growth in some industries.

Data centers provide one of the clearest examples of why water availability is becoming an economic development consideration, with recent discussions focused not only on energy demand but also on water consumption, utility infrastructure, and long-term resource capacity. Similar considerations affect food processing, advanced manufacturing, agriculture, energy production, and other water-dependent activities.

Of course, drought conditions alone do not determine economic competitiveness. Communities succeed or struggle for many reasons.

What drought conditions can do, however, is provide additional context. Economic developers who understand changing environmental conditions can better communicate local strengths, identify potential challenges, and participate in discussions regarding infrastructure capacity and future investment needs. The US Drought Monitor helps practitioners track those changing conditions through an accessible and nationally recognized framework.

State and County-Level Drought Monitor Example:
Idaho, Conditions as of August 25, 2026
Source:US Drought MonitorA map of the state of Idaho outlined with internal county borders and major blue river lines. The map illustrates the geographical distribution of drought severity across the state using color-coded regions. Drought intensity levels include: 1. None 2. Abnormally dry 3. Moderate drought 4. Severe drought 5. Extreme drought 6. Exceptional drought Northern Idaho (Panhandle) is mostly classified as severe drought in the far north, transitioning into moderate drought towards the lower panhandle. Central Idaho is primarily classified as abnormally dry in the interior and east-central regions, with a small central region marked as "None." The western border of central Idaho ranges from moderate to severe drought conditions. Southern Idaho exhibits the highest drought severity. A broad band of moderate drought cuts across the south-central portion above the southern border region. The southeastern corner and central-south regions are classified predominantly as extreme drought. The southwestern corner features a large band of exceptional drought conditions, representing the highest severity level on the map. Users can drill down from national conditions to state, regional, and county-level analyses.

How Economic Developers Can Use this Data

Economic developers do not need to become water resource specialists to benefit from the US Drought Monitor. Rather, they can incorporate drought conditions into broader monitoring and planning efforts by:

  • Monitoring conditions affecting key local industries, particularly agriculture, tourism, recreation, manufacturing, and energy production.
  • Supporting economic resilience and preparedness planning.
  • Providing context for infrastructure investment discussions.
  • Strengthening grant applications and planning documents.
  • Evaluating conditions relevant to business retention, expansion, and attraction efforts.
  • Tracking long-term trends that may influence economic competitiveness.

Further, because the platform updates weekly and applies a consistent methodology nationwide, it can serve as a useful addition to community dashboards and performance-monitoring systems.

Economic developers do not need another complex dataset. Instead, they need indicators that help them understand emerging conditions, identify risks, and inform decisions.

The US Drought Monitor gives practitioners a practical way to monitor a critical component of the economic environment without requiring specialized expertise. Weekly maps, county-level statistics, historical trend data, downloadable tables, and drought outlook resources combine to create a tool that is both accessible and informative.

As communities continue to focus on infrastructure, resilience, and long-term competitiveness, the US Drought Monitor may become one of the more useful indicators available to economic development practitioners.

Additional Resources

The US Drought Monitor provides an excellent starting point, but practitioners seeking additional context may also explore National Weather Service drought outlook products, USGS water monitoring systems, and longer-term water-risk assessments such as the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas.

These resources can provide additional insight into future conditions, streamflow, groundwater levels, and broader water-supply dynamics.

About the Author

John Walker is a Senior Economic Data and Research Analyst at Camoin Associates. He holds a Masters of Arts in Economics from Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Statistics from the University of Minnesota. He over 20 years of experience as a data analyst and economist, including analyzing the economic impacts of infrastructure improvement projects and tourism site expansions to forecasting commercial real estate market demand at the metro-area level. He has modeled commercial and residential construction activity based on economic and demographic drivers and projected technology spending and adoption at the industry level.

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