Current Impacts
To see or report current drought impacts, please visit the Drought Impacts Toolkit, where you can find impacts from media in the Drought Impact Reporter and from citizen scientists and other volunteer observers under Condition Monitoring Observations.
Historic Impacts
No two states have the same experience during a drought. Below are examples of some of the impacts experienced in Puerto Rico in the past. The process for developing this example impact table is described in Noel, M., Bathke, D., Fuchs, B., Gutzmer, D., Haigh, T., Hayes, M., Poděbradská, M., Shield, C., Smith, K. and Svoboda, M., 2020. Linking drought impacts to drought severity at the state level. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 101(8), pp.E1312-E1321. doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0067.1. To view a more complete record, and to filter impacts by drought severity, sector and season, check out the interactive State Impacts Tool.
Category | Examples of historically observed impacts |
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D0 | Streamflow is low |
D1 | Crops are stressed; farmers begin to conserve water |
Fire danger increases |
Reservoir levels decline; lake banks are exposed; streamflow continues to decrease |
D2 | Agriculture sector is suffering |
Planting is delayed; ranchers are feeding cattle; hay is scarce |
Strict water rationing is implemented |
Trees and plants show stress |
D3 | Cattle have ittle feed; crops are dying |
Daily lives are altered; school schedules are affected; businesses close |
Mosquito-borne disease outbreak possible |
Tree phenology altered |
Water rationing expands; water is being trucked in; water quality is poor; aquifers are shrinking |