Drought can deepen for years even while occasional rain still falls
Drought is a shortage relative to what a landscape and its people expect — so scattered showers can fail to refill aquifers, soils, and reservoirs even when the sky is not completely rainless.
Heat and wind raise evaporation; thirsty crops and cities draw down stores faster than brief storms replace them. Paleoclimate records show megadroughts lasting decades across continents.
That slow squeeze is why drought feels invisible until wells fail. Monitoring snowpack, soil moisture, and streamflow turns a vague dry spell into an early-warning story for food and water security.
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