Drought in Santa Catalina and Rincon Mountains, Arizona

The extreme drought (D3) category was reached in late August across most of Graham County, northern and central Greenlee County, northwest Cochise County and eastern portions of Pima and Pinal counties, including San Carlos Apache tribal lands, the White Mountains, the Pinaleno Mountains and the Santa Catalina Mountains. Below normal precipitation occurred each month from April through August of 2020 and the summer was the hottest on record in many locations. Several lightning caused wildfires and at least one human caused wildfire spread rapidly due to dry fuels, and continued into September. This included the Cow Canyon Fire in Greenlee County, which started on August 18th, but smoldered in heavy fuels with very little growth during August. Soil moisture readings were well below normal and ranked below the 20th percentile. Levels at San Carlos Reservoir fell from around 15 percent in July to less than 7 percent of storage capacity by the end of August.