Free tools · From a weather model and from space
Drought where you are
Every ward, municipality and province, month by month: rain against normal over 3 and 12 months, rain less evaporation, and how green the land is, on one scale with a class from none to extreme. Newest month: October 2026.
A drought score for each month from rain, evaporation and how green the land is: 0 is normal, and below −1 is drought. Our estimate from a weather model and from space, not an official drought declaration.
By province
The newest month: the class and the index.
No drought Dry Moderate drought Severe drought Extreme drought
Eastern CapeNo drought +2.01
- Amahlathi
- Blue Crane Route
- Buffalo City
- Dr AB Xuma
- Dr Beyers Naude
- Elundini
- Emalahleni
- Enoch Mgijima
- Great Kei
- Ingquza Hill
- Intsika Yethu
- Inxuba Yethemba
- King Sabata Dalindyebo
- Kou-Kamma
- Kouga
- Kumkani Mhlontlo
- Makana
- Matatiele
- Mbhashe
- Mnquma
- Ndlambe
- Nelson Mandela Bay
- Ngqushwa
- Ntabankulu
- Nyandeni
- Port St Johns
- Raymond Mhlaba
- Sakhisizwe
- Senqu
- Sundays River Valley
- Umzimvubu
- Walter Sisulu
- Winnie Madikizela-Mandela
Free StateNo drought +2.02
GautengNo drought +1.61
KwaZulu-NatalNo drought +0.78
- Abaqulusi
- Alfred Duma
- Big Five Hlabisa
- Dannhauser
- Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma
- eDumbe
- Emadlangeni
- Endumeni
- eThekwini
- Greater Kokstad
- Impendle
- Inkosi Langalibalele
- Inkosi Mtubatuba
- Johannes Phumani Phungula
- Jozini
- KwaDukuza
- Mandeni
- Maphumulo
- Mfolozi
- Mkhambathini
- Mpofana
- Msinga
- Mthonjaneni
- Ndwedwe
- Newcastle
- Nkandla
- Nongoma
- Nqutu
- Okhahlamba
- Ray Nkonyeni
- Richmond
- The Msunduzi
- Ulundi
- Umdoni
- Umhlabuyalingana
- uMhlathuze
- uMlalazi
- uMngeni
- uMshwathi
- uMuziwabantu
- Umvoti
- Umzimkhulu
- Umzumbe
- uPhongolo
LimpopoNo drought +2.19
MpumalangaNo drought +1.50
Northern CapeNo drought +2.28
North WestNo drought +2.13
Western CapeNo drought +1.06
How the classes are set
The index is the mean of the parts a month has. No drought above −0.5; dry from −0.5; moderate drought from −1; severe from −1.5; extreme from −2. A place needs at least two parts for an index. Greenness joins from 2017, so earlier months rest on rain and evaporation alone. Checked against the 2015 to 2018 Western Cape drought and the 2015 to 2016 drought in the summer rainfall provinces: see the dataset’s checks on its page.
Rain and evaporation are modelled estimates from a weather reanalysis, averaged over the whole place, not station readings; greenness is measured from space. This is not an official drought declaration: those come from the National Disaster Management Centre.
Source
Rain and evaporation are modelled estimates from a weather reanalysis, averaged over the whole place, not station readings; greenness is measured from space. This is not an official drought declaration: those come from the National Disaster Management Centre.
How we worked this out
The drought index puts four measures on one scale, each in standard deviations from its 1991 to 2020 normal for the time of year (minus is drier): rain over the last 3 months and the last 12 (from ERA5-Land), rain less evaporation over 12 months (ERA5-Drought’s SPEI, so a hot, dry year counts for more), and how green the land is (from space, since 2017). The index is their mean.
What we changed: we summed ERA5-Land’s monthly rain over 3 and 12 months for each place and fitted it to a gamma distribution per calendar month (1991 to 2020) to get the SPI; averaged ERA5-Drought’s 0.25 degree SPEI and SPI over each place by its area in each cell; and took the mean of the parts.
Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 1950 to 2026 (ERA5-Land, for rain; ERA5-Drought, for SPEI). Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains. Greenness: NDVI Anomaly, Digital Earth Africa (CC BY 4.0), modified; Landsat imagery courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2017 to 2026. Copernicus Climate Change Service: Monthly drought indices from 1940 to present derived from ERA5 reanalysis (ERA5-Drought). Climate Data Store (CDS), DOI 10.24381/9bea5e16.Muñoz Sabater, J. (2019): ERA5-Land monthly averaged data from 1950 to present, C3S CDS, DOI 10.24381/cds.68d2bb30. Under CC BY 4.0.
Dataset: drought monitor, release of 12 November 2026.