Drought Parches Mexico. The amount of water in the Cutzamala system overall has dropped to roughly 25 percent of total capacity. The lack of water has prompted officials to start reducing the amount of water the system delivers to Mexico City

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1. Beginning in summer 2023, one of the most severe droughts that Mexico has faced in more than a decade began to bake the North American country. Over the following year, the drought intensified and spread widely.

   “Extreme” and “exceptional” drought, as classified by the North American Drought Monitor, now afflicts several states in Mexico. States experiencing these categories of drought include Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Durango in northern Mexico, as well as Tamaulipas, San Luis Potosí, Guanajuato, Querétaro, and Hidalgo farther south.

   As the drought persists, it is parching crops, exacerbating fires, and straining water systems throughout the country. Concerns about water supplies have become particularly acute in Mexico City, the capital city of 19 million people, where reservoirs have dipped to historically low levels and groundwater aquifers are nearly depleted.

   The images above, acquired by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 and OLI-2 on Landsat 9, show water in Valle de Bravo, one of three major reservoirs that store water for Mexico City. The reservoir is part of the Cutzamala water system, an inter-basin network of reservoirs and canals that conveys surface water from the Cutzamala River to Mexico City. It provides the city with about 25 percent of its water. A second water network that connects to the Lerma River provides about 8 percent of the city’s water. The rest comes from wells that tap into groundwater aquifers