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Drought conditions will persist in more than half of the United States through at least June, complicating water supplies and increasing the risk of wildfires, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday.

While NOAA publishes its spring outlook, a broad climate forecast for April, May, and June, nearly 60 percent of the continental United States is experiencing drought, the largest since 2013. While these conditions are not new, the agency expects them to worsen and spread over the coming months, driven by above-average temperatures and below-average precipitation.

This is a turn in the wrong direction after a winter in which some drought-stricken Western states have seen recovery. And while these states are doing better than last summer, some states in the Southern Plains are doing significantly worse.

Jon Gottschalck, the operational branch chief of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said during a call to reporters Thursday that several parts of the Southwest and Southern Plains that are not currently drought-ridden — namely parts of Arizona, Kansas and Texas — are expected to begin. .

Lake Powell, one of two large reservoirs on the Colorado River dropped this week It’s at its lowest level since it was created more than 50 years ago with the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam. It is approaching a threshold that will stop hydroelectric generation at the dam.

The forecast is also bleak in California, with the majority of the state return to “severe” or “extreme” drought.

“The snowpack is below average for most of California and there’s really little time to close the precipitation gap,” said Brad Pugh, operational drought leader at the Center for Climate Prediction. Combined with the possibility of above-normal temperatures, “which, unfortunately, would certainly be a fit for severe drought in Northern and Central California during the summer,” he said.

Brett Whitin, a hydrologist at NOAA’s California Nevada River Prediction Center, said the Central Valley’s three-year rainfall totals are likely to be the lowest since modern record keeping began in 1922.

All this increases the risk of wildfires, which have become larger and more frequent in recent years. in the United States a study published this week Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that from 2005 to 2018, fires occurred twice as often in Western states and four times more often in Great Plains states than in the previous two decades. And globally, the most devastating fires will occur more regularly as climate change worsens. According to a recent United Nations report.

A key factor in the circumstances NOAA expects is, La Ninaa climate system Developed in 2021 It is expected to remain in place for the second year in a row and through the spring. This phenomenon includes changes in sea surface temperatures and air pressure in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which can affect weather patterns around the world and in particular Contributed to California’s drought.

La Niña and its counterpart, El Niño, are part of a naturally occurring cycle, but climate change can increase the frequency and intensity.

NOAA also released a spring flood outlook Thursday that identified the highest risk in areas along the Red River that separates Minnesota and North Dakota. (Forecast identifies areas at risk only based on underlying factors such as soil saturated by continuous, heavy rainfall; any area is viable flash flood from heavy storm.)