Record US drought sparks worries about fires, water supply and food prices

Drought in the contiguous United States has reached record levels for this time of year, weather data shows. Meteorologists said it's a bad sign for the upcoming wildfire season, food prices and western water issues.

More than 61% of the Lower 48 states is in moderate to exceptional drought — including 97% of the Southeast and two-thirds of the West — according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. It's the highest levels for this time of year since the drought monitor began in 2000.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's comprehensive Palmer Drought Severity Index not only hit its highest level for March since records started in 1895, but last month was the third-driest month recorded regardless of time of year. It trailed only the famed Dust Bowl months of July and August 1934.

Because of record heat, much of the West has had exceptionally low levels of snow in the first few months of the year, which is usually how the region stores water for the summer. A different drought — connected to the jet stream keeping storms further north — has put the South from Texas all the way to the East Coast into a separate drought that just happens to coincide with what's going on in the West, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center.

It would take 19 inches of rain in one month to break the drought in eastern Texas and more than a foot of rain to solve the deficit for most of the Southeast, NOAA calculated.

“Right now 61% of the country is in drought and that’s steadily been going up for the calendar year,” Fuchs said. “We just haven’t seen too many springs where this amount of the country has been in this kind of shape.”

Sticking out like a sore thumb is a highly technical but crucial measurement of “the sponginess'' of the atmosphere — or how much moisture the hot, dry air is sucking up from the land it's baking. It's called vapor pressure deficit. It's 77% above normal and more than 25% higher than the previous record for January through March in the West, said UCLA hydroclimatologist Park Williams.

That level of moisture-sucking from the ground “wouldn't have appeared possible” before now, Williams said.

Drought usually peaks in summer, not spring, and that's what worries meteorologists.

“Fire tends to respond to heat and drought in an exponential manner,” Williams said. “For each degree of warming, you get a bigger bang in terms of fire than you got from the previous degree of warming.”

In Arizona, cacti are blooming months early and the worry about water has already started, said Kathy Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona.

“Those of us who are dependent on the Colorado River, of course, are very concerned about the fact that we don’t have a negotiated path forward in the middle of what appears to be possibly the worst year of drought that we’ve all experienced,” Jacobs said. “We have lots of reservoirs that are not full.”

Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters said his biggest concern is what drought will do to agriculture and then food prices. If America has a poor crop year because of the drought, it could be a global problem. A strong natural El Nino weather oscillation is predicted, which often reduces crop yield in other places across the globe, such as India.

UCLA's Williams said the drought and hotter weather are driven by both natural variability and human-caused climate change with randomness a slightly bigger factor.

“All weather is now affected by climate change,” Arizona's Jacobs said. “There is no such thing as weather that's divorced from climate trends. But this extreme event is extreme in the way that we’ve been expecting: extreme heat waves, intense drought.”

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FILE - A firefighter battles the Canyon Fire on Aug. 7, 2025, in Hasley Canyon, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said a French soldier was killed and three others injured on Saturday morning in an attack on U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

“Everything suggests that responsibility for this attack lies with Hezbollah,” Macron wrote on social media. “France demands that the Lebanese authorities immediately arrest those responsible and assume their responsibilities alongside UNIFIL,” the U.N. mission in southern Lebanon.

Macron identified the soldier as Staff Sgt. Florian Montorio of the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment from Montauban. He added that three of Montorio’s “comrades in arms were injured and evacuated.”

“The nation bows in respect and extends its support to the families of our soldiers and to all our military personnel engaged for peace in Lebanon,” he said.

His death came nearly a month after a drone attack on March 12 targeted a Kurdish military base in Iraq's Erbil region, killing French Chief Warrant Officer Arnaud Frion and wounding six others.

French Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin said Saturday that the soldier was killed during an ambush in the Deir Kifa region in Lebanon. She said he was on a mission to open a route toward a UNIFIL post that had been isolated for several days due to fighting in the area between Hezbollah and Israeli forces.

A 10-day ceasefire took effect in Lebanon on Friday, but it wasn't clear to what extent Hezbollah would abide by a truce it did not play a role in negotiating.

“He was caught in an ambush by an armed group at very close range,” she said on X. “Immediately hit by a direct shot from a light weapon, he was pulled back under fire by his comrades, who were unable to resuscitate him.”

Macron spoke with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam following the attack “in order to call on the Lebanese authorities to shed full light on this incident, to identify and prosecute those responsible without delay, and to do everything possible to ensure the safety of UNIFIL soldiers, who must under no circumstances be targeted,” Macron's office said.

Macron also reiterated “the importance of full respect for the ceasefire by all parties and reaffirmed France’s commitment to Lebanon’s sovereignty, for the benefit of all Lebanese people and regional stability.

A man walks between destroyed buildings on the second day of a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Saturday, April 18, 2026.(AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Residents remove rubble from their destroyed house on the second day of a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel in Nabatiyeh town, south Lebanon, Saturday, April 18, 2026.(AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Residents remove rubble from their destroyed house on the second day of a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel in Jibchit village, south Lebanon, Saturday, April 18, 2026.(AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)