The impacts of the United States drought of 2007 to both society and ecosystems were substantive and included multi-billion dollar agricultural losses and the second worst wildfire season on record. The purpose of this paper is to place the 2007 drought in historical perspective relative to the climate record from 1895?2007 to increase our understanding of this hazard and contribute to improvements of drought mitigation plans. We compared the 2007 drought historically against the climatic record (1895?2007) using the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). We then examined the temporal progression of the 2007 drought and placed the peak month of drought severity (November) in historical perspective using rankings of severity and statistical [...]
