Climate intelligence for the great outdoors.

The nation faces a stark hydrological divide as late May unfolds, with catastrophic reservoir depletion gripping the South-Central states while major rivers surge across the Midwest and Southeast. In Texas, the crisis has reached emergency proportions: multiple critical water supplies are operating at fractions of their capacity—Richland-Chambers Reservoir holds just one-third of normal levels, Lake Tawakoni barely half, and Eagle Mountain Reservoir near Fort Worth has plummeted to 27% of average storage. This pattern extends through Kansas, where Tuttle Creek, Milford, and Perry Lakes are all running at roughly 40% of normal capacity, threatening municipal water supplies and agricultural operations during the crucial growing season. Oklahoma's Lake Hudson sits at just one-third capacity, while Arizona's Bartlett and Horseshoe Reservoirs are similarly depleted. The timing compounds concerns as AccuWeather's 2026 Oregon fire forecast warns of deteriorating conditions, and new wildfire activity has already emerged in Los Angeles County, underscoring the West's vulnerability heading into peak fire season.

Conversely, the Ohio River at Old Shawneetown is pushing 259,000 cubic feet per second—among the highest flows recorded—while the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, the White River system in Arkansas, and the upper Mississippi near the Twin Cities all register exceptional volumes that have triggered flood watches extending through the week across West Virginia and Alabama. The extreme reservoir conditions in the drought-stricken regions are particularly alarming given their magnitude: Lake Eucha in Oklahoma holds nearly 1 million times its average (from 0.07 to 67,620 acre-feet), while Toledo Bend Reservoir in Texas swells to 24 times normal—suggesting either catastrophic baseline measurement failures or unprecedented inflow events that contrast sharply with downstream depletion. Hurricane season preparations intensify along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, with Virginia officials briefing residents and Florida unveiling a new CAT 5-rated emergency operations center, while minimal snowpack remains nationwide save for isolated pockets in Alaska's North Slope and trace amounts in Washington's Cascades.