More than 60 percent of U.S. is covered by drought as impacts worsen. A total of nine states – Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia as well as D.C. – are completely covered by drought

Large swaths of the United States are in desperate need of soaking rainfall as drought continues to deepen.

Stretching from Oregon to Florida and northward to the nation’s capital, nearly 63 percent of the country is facing drought conditions of varying intensity, just 2 percentage points shy of the most widespread drought this century, which occurred in 2012.

The driest state compared with its average has been Utah, where there has been a 59 percent reduction in precipitation since October. Not far behind are Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, seeing a 46, 43 and 39 percent reduction, respectively.

“The West’s hydrology and climate are very much out of sync with the historical rhythm,” said assistant Utah state climatologist Jon Meyer.

In Utah, there is some trepidation on what the next few months will look like for water consumption, Meyer said. Record low winter snowfall and record high March temperatures resulted in extremely premature snowpack melt and dismal water runoff volumes. That is also the case in Colorado, where “the mountain snowpack is in historically bad shape,” Colorado state climatologist Russ Schumacher wrote earlier this month.