We’re in the 14th year of drought here in Phoenix. I read that statistic every time it rains. Or when it may rain. Or when it was supposed to rain, but didn’t. Or if someone dares to say rain in passing conversation somewhere within the city limits. It rained over the last two days, so mentions of the drought are through the roof.

Every time I read it, I find myself wondering- if you never get any rain, how do you know if you’re in a drought? If only there were some type of world wide web of information out there to answer these questions.

Fortunately, there is. And this article does quite a good job of explaining it:

Tony Haffer with the National Weather Service, chair of the monitoring committee, defines a drought by looking at our current rainfall stations and river flows for the current year, and comparing them to data from the last 30 years.

If the current levels are at or below 15 percent of the 30 year average, then we are in a drought.

Droughts are also put into two different categories including a 12-month and a 48-month category.

We are above average in the 12-month category this year, but still in the moderate range for the 48-month period, or long-term drought status.

Because of the chronic low water conditions, water conservation is kind of big deal here. But not as big a deal as I expected.

The city of Phoenix does a great job of systemic water conservation, and they claim we have enough water to last 50 years of drought conditions.

In fact, water use in the Phoenix metro area is only up 35% in the last 25 years, despite a 77% growth in population over the same period. GPCD (gallons per capita per day), has been reduced by about 21 percent over the same period.

Source: Phoenix City Web Site and the article I excerpted above, which actually gets the water use statistics wrong