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Rapid Readout: Impacts of Severe Drought

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The video presents an urgent briefing on the severe drought conditions currently affecting communities across the western United States, emphasizing that these issues extend far beyond dry lawns or wilting vegetation to threaten reservoirs, agriculture, and hydropower generation. The core subject is explained through the concept of the "drought cascade," which illustrates how a lack of precipitation initiates a chain reaction within the hydrological system. This process begins with meteorological drought caused by insufficient rain or snow, but it propagates downward to create deficits in soil moisture that impact agriculture and livestock long after rainfall has returned to normal levels. Eventually, these conditions lead to critically low streamflow and groundwater depletion, creating significant lags where water shortages persist even when weather patterns improve. The presentation highlights specific data from 2026 showing a massive snow drought across the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, which set the stage for extreme soil moisture deficits by mid-May and severely reduced streamflows in basins like the Colorado River. Experts note that climate change is expected to make such conditions much more common; projections suggest that events currently considered anomalies could become five times more likely by 2050 and ten times more likely by 2100 under certain emission scenarios. This shift challenges traditional definitions of drought, as what was once an aberration may soon become the new normal, necessitating a proactive approach to disaster preparedness rather than relying solely on reactive measures after damage occurs. Furthermore, the briefing details how drought acts as a compounding hazard that intensifies other catastrophic events through complex interactions with heat, wildfires, and flooding. Extreme temperatures exacerbate soil moisture loss by increasing atmospheric demand for water, while dry soils become hydrophobic or repel water, leading to increased runoff during heavy rainstorms rather than groundwater recharge. These interconnected risks mean that communities face a "perfect storm" of hazards simultaneously, requiring integrated decision-making tools that combine observational data from snowpack and weather stations with advanced forecasting models to help farmers and resource managers plan for uncertain futures. To address these growing challenges, the video concludes by identifying critical gaps in federal policy and funding, particularly regarding the long-term maintenance of essential observation networks like Mesonet and SNOTEL. The experts argue that sustaining these data collection systems is paramount because accurate observations are the foundation upon which all drought models and projections rely. Moving forward, there is a strong need for better integration of scientific findings with decision-makers to translate complex hydrological science into actionable support tools, ensuring that nations can build resilience against increasingly frequent and severe climate-related disasters through sustained investment in both operational science and observational infrastructure.
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Hi everyone. Welcome to our rapid readout impacts of severe drought. I'm Dan Bersette. I'm the president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. The idea behind a rapid readout briefing is that if you give us 30 minutes, we will give you what you need to know about a climate, clean energy, or environmental topic in the news. For example, our most recent rapid readout was a discussion about proposals to reorganize the US Forest Service. And before that, we learned about how the private sector might react to the repeal of the endangerment finding by the EPA. Of course, all of our regular briefings continue. Last week, for example, we organized a really interesting panel with our friends at the Natural Resources Defense Council about a new research roadmap that could help us measure and therefore reduce agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. And exactly 1 month ago today, on June 24th, uh if you can believe it, EESI and several hundred of our closest friends spent the day learning about clean energy at the 29th annual Congressional Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Expo and Policy Forum. Visit us online at eesi.org and subscribe and subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter Climate Change Solutions to keep up with everything we've got going on. And if you missed any part of the Expo, you really need to check it out. It was a really great show. Today, we will be joined by an expert who can help us understand the terrible drought conditions that so many communities are suffering from. Water always flows downhill, as they say, except when there's no water to flow. And last winter, areas in the western United States received less rain and snow than normal. And now, along with record high temperatures, there are serious concerns about an extra-long wildfire season. Drought also depletes reservoirs, which could lead to water shortages this summer that affect residents, businesses, agriculture, and hydropower. And big, big problems that go far, far beyond dry lawns and wilting trees and flowers are in our future. This is also something that we know Congress is hearing about, and they are looking for ways that federal policies can be improved to help states and communities deal with drought now and for years to come. If you have questions for our panelists, you can send us an email with your question and the email address to use is ask, that's a s k at e s i.org. Um, we really appreciate everyone who asks us questions and we'll we'll do our best to incorporate them uh into the discussion. And while you're watching, uh please follow us on social media at e s i online. So without any further ado, it's my privilege to introduce our panelists today. Zack Hoylman is Montana's assistant state climatologist and a research assistant professor at the University of Montana. Based in the Montana Climate Office, Zack's work examines how climate change is reshaping drought, water availability, and ecosystem processes across the nation. He combines climate and hydraulic hydrologic hydrologic science with remote sensing, geospatial analysis, and machine learning to improve stream flow forecasting, soil moisture modeling, and drought prediction. A central focus of Zack's research is moving beyond the assumption that past climate conditions reliably represent the present and developing actionable information that helps communities, resource managers, and decision makers adapt to a changing climate. Zack, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really looking forward to your presentation. >> Thank you so much. I really appreciate the invite to be here. Yeah, as as uh Daniel said, my name is Zack Hoylman. Um, I'm really excited to be here today and I just want to thank you again for the invite. Um, you know, I I spend a lot of time thinking about drought um and thinking about how it impacts our communities and impacts um you know, the the places that I recreate, the places that I love um in Montana. And so I think this is a really key topic to be discussing today, especially under the context of a changing climate. So today I want to talk about this concept called the drought cascade. And the drought cascade is really um a way to think about how drought propagates through the water cycle Um and impacts different communities, different sectors, and really I think helps us to understand how there can be lags in when precipitation deficits occur and when we maybe see low stream flow conditions or low reservoir conditions or see persistent depletions in our groundwater systems. And so, this concept of the drought cascade really helps us to understand how the hydrological system um basically interacts with drought as as a whole. So, next slide, please. So, what is the drought cascade? Well, before I get to the drought cascade, the first thing that we need to understand when we think about drought is that drought is by definition an anomaly. What I mean by that is that drought isn't necessarily just a dry condition, it has to be a drier than normal condition. What this means is that drought looks very different in different regions. For example, if we're in the Pacific Northwest, you may have 10 in or 20 in of precipitation deficit that then results in a drought. But if we're in part places like Western Montana where we only have 13 in of precipitation over the entire year, a drought might only be represented by 3 in of a lack of precipitation. So, that relativity is a really core concept in drought science. And so, when we think about how that relativity and drought kind of dynamics propagate through the water cycle, this notion of the drought cascade can be a really nice conceptual model. So, I'm going to start this talk by just describing the drought cascade. We're going to evaluate how conditions have kind of evolved across 2026 so far this year and then take kind of a future-looking perspective to think about what we might learn from current conditions and current droughts. So, the drought cascade can be conceptualized pretty well by this graphic. This is an adaptation from a a hydrological graphic from McNabb which is from the Illinois State Climate Office, Water Office, actually, from from many years ago. But, the top panel, basically, let's just look at that first line, shows precipitation and/or snowpack as your initial drought signal. Now, this is the key. Drought initiates by a lack of precipitation or warmer than normal conditions that cause evaporation and atmospheric demand, but it's always starts with generally a precipitation deficit. So, that top panel shows that in the first period where we have a blue shading, we're actually in a period where we're above normal in terms of precipitation. This is just a theoretical location. And then over time, maybe we have a couple of months of no precipitation. You can see that line starts to drift into the orange box. That orange box represents a precipitation deficit. So, here, over in uh say several months, we have a lack of precipitation, and based on our meteorological understanding, our precipitation-based focused on notion of drought, we're in a drought. And then maybe over some time, we have some more precipitation, things get back to normal, and then we cascade back into this green area of the of the plot where we're showing kind of a meteorological recovery of drought. And this may be a classical view of drought. We might think of precipitation as being one of the key drivers of drought, and it certainly is. But, we know that precipitation deficits aren't really what impact communities. It's deficits of soil moisture that are impacting agriculture or livestock production through hay production, or streamflow levels that are well below normal that are impacting municipal water supply or irrigation water supply. So, what we can see is as we go down this plot, down to the next two lines, representing both soil moisture first, and then streamflow, there's this lag between precipitation deficits and dryness in the atmosphere, and the response in the soils. And so this is this drought cascading through the hydrological reservoirs as we go deeper into the hydrological system. So what you can see is that while we might be responding relatively quickly to that drought onset, there can be quite a lag between the recovery of these different systems and as they relate to precipitation. So you can see as precipitation crests back into that green component of the box and we're into a more meteorologically wet period, you can still have persistent soil moisture deficits or streamflow deficits that continue long past the meteorological drought, right? And this can be taken to the logical extreme with the deepest hydrological reservoir groundwater, where you can have a really long lag between that propagation, that cascade of that drought signal into the deeper components of the hydrological system. So from this slide, what I really want you to take away is that drought is not a single condition. It propagates through the water cycle at different time scales and the impacts of drought can really lag behind those meteorological anomalies. So next slide, please. So let's look at what happened this year in the Western United States. Well, the drought cascade was quite evident. And if we start on the left-hand side, what I'm showing you is three different maps. Snowpack, soil moisture in the middle and streamflow. And they're at different time periods. Snowpack, we're starting in April 1st, so that's kind of the end of the snow accumulation series. This is a typical time period where we evaluate our snow water resources for the year. Soil moisture in the middle is in mid-May. And then at the end is July 15th streamflow. And this is just a few days ago, um about a week ago, showing kind of conditions across the Western United States. So I've color-coded this based on this notion of relativity. So you can see exceptional drought is in those reds and exceptional wetness is in those blues. Um but what you can see starting with snowpack on the left is that you may have heard the Western United States was in a significant snow drought this year, and you can see that here. Especially in places like the Rocky Mountains, across Colorado, going through Utah, up into Montana, big portions of the Sierras and the Cascades, and really only the northernmost portions of the Rocky Mountains were not in a significant snow drought in this kind of April 1st time period. So, that kind of sets the stage, right, for this drought propagation deeper into the hydrological system, and serves as an early warning. In April, we were discussing concerns about water supplies given these snowpack conditions. So, now if we move into the middle, we can see a month and a half later contributed by these lack of of precipitation and snowpack, but exacerbated further by May and April conditions where we had warm conditions during those that's those spring months and lesser than normal precipitation. We ended up with really extreme soil moisture deficits. And I chose this May 15th period because, of course, this is when um there's a a bunch of agricultural producers that are starting to initiate their crops. This is when hay production really kicks off across our rangelands. Um, and this just shows that this cascade from our snowpack into our soil moisture is now having this lagged impact on our ecological systems and our agricultural systems going into May. We can go even further and really focus in on the Colorado River Basin area in Colorado, where we had really, really significant snowpack deficits alongside these soil moisture deficits, and see now that this drought cascade has propagated deep into the hydrological system, and we're now seeing extremely low streamflow conditions in the upper Colorado River Basin in particular, um which is contributing to this extreme kind of water deficit and water crisis that's occurring in the western United States, especially in the Colorado River Basin. So, when we think about the current drought, this 2026 drought, we can think about it from the perspective of current conditions and how they're impacting our communities, and that's how we should think about them, and we should consider all the disaster preparedness and disaster response that might be required to mitigate this type of event. But, it's also important to use this current event to help us to think about what we need to prepare for in the future. So, next slide, please. So, I was lucky enough to be a part of National Academies study recently that just released this report. I invite you to look at this report. It's part of a FACA compliant or a Federal Advisory Committee Act compliant reporting process that describes basically a vision for future drought assessment and understanding how to reconcile changes to our climatic baselines, climate normals, into the future and what that means for drought, right? I said at the beginning of this talk that drought is by definition a abnormality or a deviation from normal. But, if normal itself is changing, then so too do our definitions of what is drought. And so, what we know is that the West is in drought right now. And what we also know is that climate change is expected to make these droughts much more common in the future. So, we can use some pretty sophisticated probabilistic based frameworks alongside our latest and greatest climate projections and models to really try to understand how current conditions might be reflected in the future. So, that's what I'm showing you here on this map. If you look at just the top left map, that is current conditions from June. So, this is June 2026, just looking at precipitation and temperature anomalies effectively. And what you can see is that over the Colorado River Basin, there's this persistent kind of patch of reds and oranges, and that represents a continuation of this of this drought, right? That's that's been occurring since for the last several years, to be frank. Um and what we did was take those exact same conditions and then projected them over the climate from 2050 and 2100. And so what you can see is that middle top middle map is 2050 and the top the right top map is 2100. And the fact that those colors are getting less and less red on that map, especially over the Colorado, indicates that these conditions are expected to become much more common into the future. And in fact, the map two maps below that are all kind of that salmon red color really reflect this, and they show how much more likely this current June event is into the future. So what you can see is in 2050, we may expect that these conditions be five times more likely to occur, and that's only 20 25 30 years away. So that's that's actually a pretty recent time scale in terms of these really rapid changes. By 2100, we're looking at maybe a 10 time increase in the amount of or in the likelihood of these events occurring, right? And this is just one climate projection, and this is just one emission scenario, a a middle of the road to middle high kind of emission scenario, but it really helps us to reflect how current conditions might be reflected in the future. And I think offers us a lens to think about how to prepare for future droughts by using the current conditions as an analog for what we might expect into the future. So I I urge us as we think about drought in especially in a changing climate to not only think about the impacts and current conditions, but really think about how we might learn from current conditions to prepare for the future because a resilient nation needs to be one that that really focuses on this preparedness and kind of shifts from a reactive paradigm towards a proactive paradigm. With that, I'll say thank you very much. Um and here's some contact information and resources if you're interested and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you. >> Thank you, Zach. That was a really great presentation. Um and uh everything that you just saw and heard is available at ESI.org or will soon be available at ESI.org. You can also check out our YouTube page if you want to go back and revisit any of the the charts that Zach just described or or any of or or re-listen or or re-re-watch the um uh the briefing. That was a really great presentation. Um I have a quick follow-up question. So, I hadn't really thought of it, but the idea of drought being an aberration as opposed to normal condition, that makes a ton of sense. I'm not a climatologist, so maybe that's why I hadn't thought of it as an aberration, but it's Is there a debate in sort of the scientific community about when if aberrations stop becoming aberrations, when did they become the new normal? Uh and so those salmon-y orange charts that you showed for 2050 and for 2100, like when does when does unfortunately this new set of conditions kind of take over? Is there a Is there like a scientific consensus about when we kind of cross that threshold? >> It's a great question. Um and you know, this has been the focus of a lot of our current research is kind of this this notion of as as baselines are changing, you know, when do we start to reflect current conditions um in a different way to reflect contemporary risk. And that's really the way I think about it is that the goal of understanding contemporary conditions, right, is to describe accurately to decision-makers, producers, irrigators, for example, what their current contemporary risk is in an accurate way. Because if we are able to describe to people what their risk is today, that allows them to understand kind of how they might modify their decision-making into tomorrow. Um so, to answer your question directly, I would say no. This is um this is a an active realm of research in drought science and in climate science. There's been some really great uh papers coming out recently um that have basically used a concept called the time of emergence, which is this uh idea basically saying what year have these are are what we used to consider drought now considered the normal condition. Um and the truth of the matter is that it's very context-dependent. So, if you're interested in soil moisture, you're going to get a different answer than if you're interested in precipitation or if you're interested in um you know, snow pack. But, what is also equally important to understand is that we have much greater certainty in certain components of the hydrological system than we do with others, right? And how they're changing over time. For example, we have much higher confidence in the trajectory of atmospheric conditions in terms of temperature, atmospheric demand, the thirst of the atmosphere for moisture. We have less certainty in uh precipitation dynamics going into the future. So, while I think that there's still robust debate to be had about when we might cross thresholds, we can use the best possible climate models and the best possible probabilistic models that we have to try to think about what we what we can say uh with some level of certainty about where we're going, when we might be crossing these thresholds, and um at the same time be honest about the uncertainties that we have in these systems. For example, I'll just say that the those maps that I made um are just for a single climate model. We should be doing that type of work for all of the different climate models and seeing where they all kind of agree or disagree. It's just an expression of how we might be thinking about the droughts of the future, but certainly more research needs to be done in that regard. >> Okay, thanks for that. As a reminder to our online audience, we're going to go another 10 or 12 minutes or so. If you have a question for Zach, send us an email and the email address to use is ask, that's or ask that's ask@esi.org. So you were talking about, you know, presenting these sorts of findings to decision-makers and producers. Our audience, our core audience is Congress and specifically the member of the the staff person who works for the member of Congress. So what are the gaps that need to be addressed at the federal level whether those are funding gaps, information gaps, or other gaps that I didn't mention that we need to be putting more time and effort into to help alleviate these conditions. I'm I'm thinking that some of our audience today will be wondering, well, what can we do and I'm curious, what what do you think they can do? >> Yeah, this is an excellent question and one that we think a lot about in in the climate office. And I'd say that, you know, the biggest gap isn't necessarily a lack of drought information necessarily. It's better integration across scales, better observations, better translation of science into decision support, and then of course, you know, the need for for more basic science. I'd say that we've made tremendous progress in drought monitoring over the over the past two plus decades with the origin of the US Drought Monitor and the National Drought Mitigation ex centers excellent work on drought dynamics, right? We've made huge strides in the preparedness of our nation to understand drought conditions and respond to them, right? But I still think there are important gaps. The first one is that you know, all of the models that we create about drought, all of the projections that we make, all of the next generation machine learning based models of, you know, different hydrological conditions, etc. All are fundamentally um kind of hinged on the idea that we have good observations of conditions. And so, I'd say that the first strong need for drought um in into the future is sustained investment in observational networks. And this goes across different hydrological reservoirs including NRCS's SNOTEL snowpack, uh USCRN, the US um climate reference network soil moisture observations, streamflow observations from the USGS, groundwater observations, and weather stations from both federal and state level um entities. So, for example, um in Montana we run the Montana Mesonet. This was a um a a large expansion. It was actually um a part of a five-state expansion of of the Mesonet. We're still building it out right now. That's been funded by the Army Corps of Engineers. But funding for that um for that project basically lapsed at the end of 2027. And so, while there's oftentimes strong interest to build out information gathering systems or these kind of um foundational data sets, that's is how I think of them, um these kind of climate grade weather stations, there's less of an appetite for the long-term maintenance and operations, sustaining these stations into the future. So, I'd say that is kind of one of the most paramount components I think to maintaining our current preparedness and accelerating our preparedness into the future is making sure that we sustain and expand our observational networks across these kind of regimes. The second I'd say is better integration of these observations um with so that decision makers can understand the entire water cycle rather than, you know, individual indicators or individual drought models. And what I mean by that is, you know, there's this shift towards creating tools that are really co-produced with decision-makers, whether um drought assessors or, you know, folks from industry or risk insurance folks or all of these different sectors. We need to create better systems so that we meet the needs of all of these diverse groups and we're all speaking the same language in terms of what we mean by drought and how how we depict drought. And I'd say the last thing, third, is that we need the continued investment in operational science. Um that that is in the development of new tools, that's in the development of creating these next-generation models that are really focused on decision-making, that may be um continued investment in things like remote sensing and satellite observations. These are all key components to a resilient nation in terms of these kind of disasters and they really propagate well beyond drought. They go into many other types of catastrophes, including wildfire, floods, etc. So, um you know, that that continuation of funding and support of these networks, both observational, remote sensing, um building of these new tools to make all of these observations much more usable um and help directly with decision-making is just critical. >> Uh great. Thank you for that. Um speaking of other catastrophes, um what's the interplay or what are some of the inter um what are some of the ways that drought either affects or is affected by other severe impacts? The Those maps that you showed it's a part of the country that's also dealing with with flooding, it's also dealing with wildfires, but also extreme heat. Like a lot of stuff is hitting communities kind of all at the same time and how does drought factor into um how those other impacts um affect communities? >> Yeah, it's a great question. And you know, I'd say drought is often a compounding hazard is something the way that we think about it. Extreme heat, of course, goes alongside drought. And so extreme heat and drought reinforce one another. And you know, when you have really dry conditions, there's this this notion in hydrologic science of sensible heat versus latent heat. Latent heat is the amount of energy that's that's absorbed by evaporation. And when you have less water, say in the soil for evaporation, you have more sensible heat, which is basically the the temperature dial on your car. And so when you have less water, there's just more energy coming down from the sun and from other sources that's being translated into heat. So extreme heat and drought reinforce one another and can create, you know, these temperature conditions that are, of course, extremely hazardous to people. It can also accelerate things like soil moisture loss if there is a little bit of moisture in the soils. Extreme heat can exacerbate that loss and create vegetation stress, right? Even if precipitation hasn't changed that much. So heat and drought are extremely interrelated. Of course, when you have vegetation stress, dry vegetation's low fuel moisture, prolonged drought substantially increase wildfire risk, especially in western forests and western rangelands. So drought and wildfire are also quite interrelated. And that's why when you look at drought conditions and potential wildfire outlooks, often times they overlap. And so we we know those connections strongly. And you know, there's there's great work that shows that precipitation in particular during the summer time are these great buffers of wildfire risk. And so when you have drought and you have a lack of precipitation during the summertime, you exacerbate that risk. Flooding is a really interesting one, actually, because not only are we experiencing a more variable climate, especially in terms of precipitation, we see quite a bit more um precipitation variability, big booms, big busts. Um drought does interact with flooding in an interesting way. So, when dry when soils get really, really dry, um they become what's called hydrophobic. They They become less less able to absorb water in some cases. And that's because water moves slowly through slower through drier soils than it does through wetter soils. And this is um a nerdy relationship um between hydraulic conductivity and soil moisture. So, when you have really, really dry soils and that is interacting with extreme precipitation events with really, really high intensities, you can sometimes produce um reduced um infiltration and really extreme runoff events. So, drought what it's kind of paradoxical, but drought can actually exacerbate flooding via this feedback between the ability for soils to actually um infiltrate that water and recharge groundwater and instead just discharge it off of the surface. So, you know, there's there's many interactions between drought and other catastrophes, other hazards, um but these are just kind of three examples, heat, wildfire, and flooding that um kind of show these interrelationships between these hazards. >> Yeah, the um hydro soils being hydrophobic is something if you're into house plants, you've learned that you don't want to let your soil get too dry because then it just it doesn't it doesn't work that way. >> Yeah. >> Um yeah, there's that's really fascinating. Those runoff events are really scary. Um when they happen. It happens very quickly. >> Absolutely. >> Um my last question um Zach, before we let you go, is, um, about forecasting. So, um, I'm curious, you know, we've I feel like we've, um, we've made a lot of progress and we've covered weather for advanced weather forecasting in some of our other briefings and I'm curious if you have any sort of final thoughts about sort of the our ability, um, to forecast drought and how farmers, in particular, um, are taking that information and how that information is being made usable for them so that they can think, you know, more more wisely about sort of what their future plans are and and maybe what the growing cycle is going to look like in a in a given place. >> Yeah, it's a quick great great question. I'll I'll try to be quick. It's a big It's a big question. Um, >> You can take your time. It's okay. We're doing okay. >> Um, is incredible. We've We've come We've come a really long way in terms of forecasting and, you know, at its core, forecasting really gives communities additional time to prepare, whether that's adjusting reservoir operations, planning irrigation, allocating water supplies, or, you know, even preparing for something like a wildfire season. And what I'll say is that, of course, our short-term forecasts out to, you know, 7 days plus 10 days, um, are incredibly useful. And they can be really, really useful, especially for, you know, we were talking about agriculture, in particular, for planning irrigation and understanding kind of the water demands that might be coming, um, over the next few days. Um, this is this is really useful. It It helps us to understand where we might have extreme impacts from extreme heat events. We just had an extreme heat event up in Montana, where some of our Montana Mesonet stations were measuring 114, 115° F. Um, and and that event was predicted ahead of time. We knew it was coming. Um, it ended up being extremely severe, but that's something that, you know, can help us to think about how we might prepare. There might not be much you can do, but at least you have the information. You know, but at the same time forecasts aren't perfect and particularly when we're thinking about outlooks that are more like in the months in advance, they've they've improved substantially over the last decade, don't get me wrong, but they do still present challenges because there is quite a bit of uncertainty in those. The atmosphere is an incredibly chaotic and dynamic system and so being able to predict what's going to happen in in a month, 2 months, 3 months becomes really, really challenging. Um, you know, and perhaps more importantly, drought preparedness doesn't rely on forecast alone. It combines our current observations, forecasts, and our underlying understanding of how drought propagates through the water cycle. So, like I was saying today, you know, with this notion of the drought cascade, um, you might not need a sophisticated forecast system to tell you that when you have really extreme snowpack deficits, etc., that given normal conditions or drier than normal conditions, that you might expect this cascade into other components of the hydrological system. So, I think that there's a lot of kind of common sense forecasting that can occur from these kind of early indicators of drought like snowpack in the west and what that might mean for resulting drought conditions deeper into the hydrological system like stream flow. So, you know, forecasting takes a whole lot of of flavors and those short-term forecasts are extremely useful. The longer forecasts are still useful at the outlook scale, but need to be taken with caution given, you know, the uncertainties. And again, I think that there's a lot of common sense kind of forecasting that is already implicit in a lot of the decisions that farmers and ranchers are making when they see something like the lowest snowpack on record, for example, in a in a given location and what that might mean for their stock ponds or their, you know, creek in their backyard that they rely on for irrigation. So, it's a nuanced question, but I hope that that helps a little bit. >> Absolutely, that was great. Thank you so much. Um so, we're a little bit past the half hour mark, which means it's time to wrap up. Um Zach, thank you so much for joining us today. This was an incredible presentation and really really appreciate you dialing in from Montana to to join us today. I'm sure our audience enjoys it as well. If anyone in our online audience would like to go back and revisit Zach's presentation, the slides, materials will be available at ESI.org. Um you can also rewatch the live cast or the webcast, and you can also check us out on YouTube. The best way to ensure that you get all of the materials related to the briefing is to RSVP. So, if you're thinking about RSVPing for briefing, and you're like, "Well, I can't actually be there." RSVP anyway, and that way you'll get all the materials in case something comes up and you happen to miss it. Um but we'll also be publishing some highlight notes as well. Um and when you're there, sign up for climate change solutions. It's really the best way to keep track of everything that we're up to. And we've got lots of other great resources, briefings, fact sheets, articles, all sorts of good stuff. Um if you have a moment to take our survey, you can use the QR code on the screen to let us know how today went. Let us know if you had any audio problems, video problems, problems with the webpage. If you have ideas for future briefings. It only takes a minute or so to fill out the survey, and we really appreciate that, and we read every response. So, thanks to those who are able to take a moment to do that. Um before we wrap up today, I'd just like to say thanks to everyone behind the scenes at ESI who made the briefing today possible. So, thanks to Dan O and to Allison and to Hannah and to Amory and to Nicole and Laura and Miguel on our policy team for pulling everything together. We also have Troy, our videographer, who does all the production. And so, big thanks to him as well. We also have two really, really awesome uh uh, interns uh, with us this semester, Yasmine and and Megan. Uh, and uh, they're making great contributions to our briefings, but also all of our other resources as well. So, thanks to them. Um, thanks for joining us. Uh, this is actually the last ESI briefing until after Labor Day. Um, but we have some really, really great articles and other resources in the pipeline for August. Um, our newsletter, Climate Change Solutions, is also taking a break, but not until after the issue next week. So, if you subscribe right now, if you're not subscribing, I'm not sure what to say, but you really have to subscribe. It's really great. Subscribe now, you'll get the issue next Tuesday, and then we'll be back um, after Labor Day. And that way you get one more update, a whole bunch of new resources to give you some reading material during August recess. And that way you'll also be fully in the loop uh, when we get back in September. So, that's it for today. Thanks everyone for joining us. Thanks again to Zach for his great presentation. Hope everyone has a great weekend, and we will see you back uh, online and in person up on the hill for briefings after Labor Day. And like I said, well, our our final uh, newsletter issue of the summer will be on Tuesday. Thanks everyone. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next time.