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Major flooding in San Pedro Sula, Cortés, Honduras yesterday and it isn't for the first time this month. Seeing scenes like this becoming more common is really worrying. Climate change is making these extreme weather events hit harder, with warmer air holding more moisture and bringing heavier rainfall in a shorter space of time. Flooding like this is happening more often, leaving people to clean up and rebuild again and again. This isn’t something happening far away in the future, it’s happening right now.

The United States is experiencing its driest start to a year in more than a century. According to NOAA data and climate scientists, more than 60% of the country is currently under drought conditions, with over 20% facing extreme drought. This is not a localized issue: the drought spans large portions of the Southeast, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains, and even parts of the Pacific Northwest that are typically wetter during La Niña patterns. What makes this event especially unusual is its scale and timing. The period from January through March 2026 was the driest on record for the contiguous U.S. since comprehensive national records began in 1895. While La Niña, a cooling of the equatorial Pacific, is playing a major role by suppressing rainfall across the southern states, this year’s pattern was compounded by unusually weak storm activity in the Northwest. As a result, both southern and western regions have become extremely dry simultaneously. Compounding the problem is rising global temperatures. Warmer air increases evaporation and plant water loss (evapotranspiration), drying out soil, vegetation, and reservoirs much faster than in the past, even when rainfall deficits are comparable to previous droughts. Parts of Colorado, Georgia, Florida, and the central Rockies are among the hardest-hit areas. In the West, the lack of mountain snowpack is particularly alarming, as it normally provides a critical natural water reserve for rivers, agriculture, and ecosystems through the dry summer months. Scientists warn that these deep soil moisture deficits may persist even if summer rains arrive, because underground water reserves take much longer to replenish. Forecasters are now monitoring the Pacific for signs of a potential strong El Niño later in 2026, which could bring much-needed relief and wetter conditions to the southern and western United States. ["Assessing the U.S. Temperature and Precipitation Analysis in March 2026." NOAA]