PHOENIX (AZFamily) — A new report from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows that most of Arizona is in some stage of drought.

The report shows that 99.34% of the state is currently in a drought. This is unchanged from last week’s report, but it is significantly higher than the start of 2025, when 76% of the state was in some stage of drought.

To best illustrate this change, let’s focus on “Extreme Drought,” which is shown in red on the map below. “Extreme Drought is category D3, the second most intense drought category. The most intense drought category is “Exceptional Drought,” denoted as D4.

Notice the difference in the red (extreme drought area) in the chart above compared to the start of this year, shown in the chart below.

At the start of 2025, note how extreme drought only covered parts of western Arizona into the northwestern part of Maricopa County. Overall, it covered 14% of the state. But in the current report, you can see how red now covers the majority of Arizona, 67%, to be exact.

Is there any good news? As bad as the drought status looks, you will notice that it’s not quite as bad in parts of northeastern Arizona, which is sitting in mostly “moderate to severe drought,” or categories D1 and D2. That is partly due to the decent March and April precipitation in that part of the state.

In fact, a good chunk of Navajo County received either normal or above-normal precipitation in the month of April.

Despite that little bit of good news, it remains dry across most of the state. One issue with extreme drought is the threat of fires, so it’s important to be aware of certain activities that could spark fires, as we showed you in a recent story .

In fact, with breezes approaching this weekend, there is already a Fire Weather Watch for southeastern Arizona for Sunday. It’s possible that the watch area could be expanded, so stay tuned for details.

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