As California’s drought improves, Texas is drying out

While heavy rains and near record snows have loosened the grip of drought on California and many areas west of the Rockies, the situation is worsening in Texas and the Southern Plains.

In that region, the ongoing drought is drying out key water sources for Central Texas cities, threatening the winter wheat harvest and leading to rising threats of wildfire and dust storms.

The U.S. Drought Monitor in April rated about 45 percent of Texas as severely dry, 20 percent is extremely dry, and 4 percent is exceptionally dry, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System.

All of those metrics are larger than they were a month ago — in particular zones of “exceptional drought” in Central Texas and the Texas panhandle that stand out on the drought monitor maps like swollen purple bruises.

About 50 percent of Kansas is also in “extreme to exceptional drought,” according to the Monitor.

Among the region’s cities, the state capital of Austin and its surrounding communities stand at particular risk. Inflows this year into the reservoir system that supplies most of the city’s water are in the bottom 12 percent on record, according to Drought Monitor.

Meanwhile, water level in wells in the critical Edwards Aquifer — the primary water source for San Antonio and much of the rest of Central Texas — are at their second-lowest level on record.

But cities are highly flexible users of water, with considerable ability to cut municipal demand through municipal restrictions. Agriculture, the predominant user of water, has far less wiggle room — and the drought is already putting pressure on the region’s winter wheat crop.

Across Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma, approximately half of counties reported “poor to very poor” wheat growing conditions.

Those could lead to 8 percent of hard red winter wheat harvest being abandoned in Kansas, and as much as 60 percent in Texas, according to agricultural analytics firm Gro Intelligence.

The combination of drought, heat and high winds also equal a rising risk of wildfire. On Tuesday, nearly 10,000 acres burned in a grass fire in the Texas Panhandle.

Such fires — along with dust storms — are a high risk throughout the region this spring.