We’ve been hearing so much about the drought in the West, Washington, the Olympic Peninsula, and, yes, right here in Sequim. But what does a drought really mean?

Is it just having less rain — or in our case — less snowpack? Or is there more to the story? Fortunately, if you’re Internet savvy — or if your children or grandchildren are — you can easily discover the rest of the story.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the place to start with its comprehensive and fascinating array of data, maps, videos and news. By Googling “NOAA,” you can spends hours, if not days, learning about droughts, climate and weather. From there you’ll find links to other valuable resources.

For instance, if you want to know on a weekly basis what the drought status is of the U.S. and of each individual state, you can do so by Googling the U.S. Drought Monitor. Every Thursday morning at 8 a.m. EDT the U.S. Drought Monitor publishes online maps of the drought status of the country as a whole and of each individual state.

Specifically, it clearly shows on its drought maps the severity of the drought in each area according to these categories: abnormally dry, moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought and exceptional drought. If you Google “Drought map of Washington State,” you’ll see Sequim and most of Washington are in the severe drought category.

We all like to know how what’s going on today compares with other time frames. The drought maps do just that by showing how the current status compares with last week, the start of the calendar year, the start of the water year and one year ago.

This way you can see if the drought is getting better, worse or staying the same. Cool information!

By definition

Now back to our initial question: What is a drought? We were wondering how this determination is made. It isn’t merely by measuring the amount of rain or snow in each area. Instead, it uses many different factors to calculate if a drought exists and its severity, including, yes, precipitation (rain and snow), soil moisture, streamflow, groundwater, reservoir levels, agricultural health, temperatures, water demand, specific geography, snowpack and on-the-ground reports of interested people like you and me.

How did I learn this? I like simple information that anyone can understand. I found it by going to the U.S. Drought Monitor’s “Drought for Kids” and watching an incredibly informative and clever video that explains all of this. The name of the video is “Assessing Drought in the United States.”

This site also has a dandy glossary to learn simple definitions of what might be jargon or geeky words.

So if you’re a parent, teacher, grandparent, government official or interested citizen, this is an excellent place to learn the basics in such a simple way that you can easily use the information and pass it on to others — adults and children.

According to NOAA’s Drought Prediction Center, the forecast is for our drought to not only persist, but to intensify. That means 2016 is going to be a repetition of 2015 — or maybe worse. That’s an excellent reason to learn how to personally monitor the drought. The more savvy you are about our drought conditions, the more you’ll want to conserve our water and encourage others to do the same. You even may want to join community groups that are addressing the drought issues. Most of all, if you’re savvy, you can help the next generation to be drought savvy as well.

Of course, we’re all wishing and hoping that Mother Nature will cover the Olympic Mountains in, well, mountains of snow. While we do our joyful snow dances to help bring this about, we have at our fingertips critical drought information. Let’s use it.

Jane Iddings is a retired attorney/mediator, university teacher, social policy analyst, newspaper columnist and world traveler. She invites you to e-mail her at jane.iddings@gmail.com, to read her blog at sequimswater.com and to join her for a cup of tea to discuss Water Matters.