Here’s how experts map Maine’s drought — and how you can help
Maine’s Drought Watchers Help Shape the Nation’s Weekly Drought Maps
Gray, Maine – The National Weather Service’s senior service hydrologist, Sarah Jamison, sits in front of a screen of gray‑to‑red bars and turns the data into a story about how the state’s dry spell fits into a larger picture that covers the entire United States.
Every Thursday, the U.S. Drought Monitor releases a fresh map that colors counties from pale yellow to deep red, indicating the severity of drought conditions. The map is not a simple snapshot of rain totals; it blends precipitation, streamflow, reservoir levels, soil moisture, evaporation, vegetation health and satellite imagery. The result is a “well‑educated guess” that guides federal agencies when they decide whether to declare disaster relief.
The map’s authorship rotates every two weeks between meteorologists and climatologists from three organizations that formed the Drought Monitor in 1999: the University of Nebraska‑Lincoln’s National Drought Mitigation Center, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The new draft is then sent to regional experts for a second look.
“People in the field have a different sense of what’s happening than the raw numbers can tell,” Jamison says. “We’re getting not just their own assessment, not just the raw numbers, but we’re getting the more localized feedback.” As a senior service hydrologist at the NWS office in Gray, she is part of the Northeast Drought Early Warning System that reviews the draft and recommends adjustments that reflect Maine’s specific climate and land use.
Why Maine matters, she notes, is that the same pattern of dryness can mean very different things in different places. “The same kind of dryness in Utah may reflect completely different impacts as it would to Cumberland County,” she explains. The Drought Monitor consults hundreds of regional and local experts, but no single observer can cover every corner of the state.
That’s where ordinary citizens step in. Anyone 18 or older can visit droughtimpacts.unl.edu or drought.gov and fill out a Condition Monitoring Observer Report. The form asks for basic details—location, how well one knows the area, and any observations such as “my well has gone dry” or “the lawn has turned brown.” Additional questions cover livestock, crop production, water supply, community health and tourism, and respondents can attach photos and comments.
Jamison emphasizes that the magnitude of the impact does not have to be dramatic to be useful. “It doesn’t matter exactly what magnitude of impact. Any kind of impacts that are driven by drought are all weighed,” she says. An observation that a local pond has dried up can serve as a check on satellite‑derived soil moisture values that might otherwise underestimate a dry spell.
“We don’t have people literally walking the area to make these designations,” Jamison says, “we have to rely on the tools in our arsenal, and then the reports that we get from people in the field.” If a map suggests “moderate” drought but residents report wells going dry and crops failing, the expert team can revisit the classification.
The public’s voice is therefore an essential part of a process that blends science with lived experience. The weekly map not only tells the state’s drought status but also informs federal agencies that weigh the need for disaster declarations. In Maine, where the landscape ranges from dense forests to agricultural valleys, the difference between a dry lawn and a failing crop can be a matter of a few inches of precipitation.
“Drought is one of the most unique weather conditions,” Jamison says. “If we have a snowstorm with 8 inches, the impacts are relatively uniform across much of the area. With a drought, they’re going to vary, and that’s just natural.” By submitting observations, Mainer residents help paint a more accurate picture—one that reflects both the broad sweep of a national drought monitor and the subtle nuances of their own backyards.
