LOWER 48 STATES — More than 61% of the Lower 48 states is in moderate to exceptional drought, the highest level for this time of year since the U.S. Drought Monitor began in 2000. The Drought Monitor reported that 97% of the Southeast and two-thirds of the West are experiencing moderate to exceptional drought.

The Palmer Drought Severity Index hit its highest level for March since records started in 1895, according to NOAA. Last month was the third-driest month recorded on the index regardless of time of year, with only July and August 1934 drier.

"Right now 61% of the country is in drought and that's steadily been going up for the calendar year." climatologist Brian Fuchs said. "We just haven't seen too many springs where this amount of the country has been in this kind of shape." Fuchs said a drought connected to the jet stream keeping storms farther north has put the region from Texas to the East Coast into drought.

NOAA calculated it would take 19 inches of rain in one month to break the drought in eastern Texas, and more than a foot of rain in one month to solve the deficit for most of the Southeast. Park Williams, UCLA hydroclimatologist, said vapor pressure deficit for January through March in the West is 77% above normal and more than 25% higher than the previous record.

Record heat has contributed to exceptionally low snow levels across much of the West in the first months of the year, a region that usually stores water for the summer via snowpack. New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah are contending with record-low snowpack, according to federal records. Snowpack is the accumulation of mountain snow that fortifies rivers, reservoirs and drinking water systems once it melts.

The National Interagency Fire Center warned that the risk of large fires later in the spring would be higher than normal for parts of the Southwest, partly because of low snowpack. Water and snowpack usually protect against wildfires by buffering dry conditions, and water supply forecasts suggest shortages could be imminent and potentially widespread.

"Fire tends to respond to heat and drought in an exponential manner." Williams said. "For each degree of warming, you get a bigger bang in terms of fire than you got from the previous degree of warming." Williams also said: "That level of moisture-sucking from the ground wouldn't have appeared possible before now."

Kathy Jacobs, director of the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions at the University of Arizona, said cacti in the state are blooming months early and that concern about water has already started. "Those of us who are dependent on the Colorado River, of course, are very concerned about the fact that we don't have a negotiated path forward in the middle of what appears to be possibly the worst year of drought that we've all experienced." Jacobs said. "We have lots of reservoirs that are not full."

Jacobs also addressed the relationship between the current conditions and longer-term climate trends. "All weather is now affected by climate change," she said. "There is no such thing as weather that's divorced from climate trends. But this extreme event is extreme in the way that we've been expecting: extreme heat waves, intense drought."