The Oregon Water Resources Department has a weekly drought report email. You can sign up for it here. You can see this week’s report here. We should all be familiar with graphs showing current drought conditions in Central Oregon (we’re mostly in extreme or exceptional drought) and current stream flows (they are well below normal overall). Above is an interesting chart showing soil moisture content that you may not be as familiar with. Deschutes County soil is dry overall, especially in the Cascades, which is the source of our water. The takeaway is that it is going to take numerous above average snow years to recover soil moisture to “normal” levels. This is important given that the vast majority of our water comes out of the ground.