the “water used per resident”, is that only considering residential water use, or wrapping agricultural use in there too? Seeing AZ apparently use about 4x as much per capita as NM, and at least 2x CA just feels like it might be off
Something doesn’t make sense. I don’t see how DC, almost entirely a city, has such high per-capita water use. And I can’t find its numbers on the sources provided.
Seattle is known as the rainy city, yet gets less rain than most all east coast cities
Strange to see that some of the places laden with water (MN, WI, ME, AK) have all sorts of water everywhere yet use the least per resident.
Your average precipitation for South Dakota is wildly inaccurate. Wherever you pulled your data from isn’t counting snow as precipitation? Regardless I’m sure there are a number of states misrepresented here.
Kind of a strange map. I read OP’s summary of what constitutes “domestic water use,” and I can’t figure out why there’s so much variance. Precipitation doesn’t seem to map to water usage very reliably.
You’d think people are eating, drinking, bathing, and pooping– at least on average– the same across the country. So lawn/garden and pool maintenance seem like logical culprits, but pool ownership maps aren’t really correlated with this, either. Is it just how much people water their personal gardens and lawns? You’d still think that’d correlate with precipitation pretty well, though.
I can’t figure out the scale of those domestic water use circles. The gallon count is not proportional to the diameter of the circle, nor the area. And some states have circle sizes that aren’t in the legend. Just my opinion, but if you’re going to use a shape with area, like a circle, the area should be in proportion to the quantity.
This has to be based upon irrigation and pool use per person. You can see that the water use is more or less inverse the precipitation. The water use is also low where pools are less prevalent in the north and higher in the south where you can use them nearly 12 months.
Does this take into account snow melt? Idaho gets a TON of snowfall in the northern half of the state which melts throughout the year and flows through various rivers in the state, providing water for agriculture use.
The ones I find most interesting are the differences in water usage between Louisiana and Mississippi, in the 86 gallon/day category, and in Alabama and Florida, in the 68 gallon/day category, despite them being in the same, highest annual precipitation category.
The explanation for the higher usage in western states seems to be that they’re watering their lawns a lot more, but I don’t see any difference between AL and MS there. In my experience people rarely use sprinkler systems in either state, though naturally I haven’t taken any scientific study of it.
Poor Hawaii. Almost the entire state was obliterated by domestic water use.
This is hurting my brain, especially considering the really cogent comments.
Nothing seems to make a lot of sense, but the takeaway seems to be that lawn maintenance is a waste of water. As someone who planted and maintains a drought friendly yard, I agree.
Still the water usage in California actually seems low. There is an enormous amount of agricultural land that needs water, and many in Southern California will *not* give up their nice green lawns despite living in a desert. So I guess not flushing our toilets is paying off. Yeah us.
(For the people not raised during the first bad drought, kids were taught: If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down. A ***lot*** of those kids still follow that rule. It’s a habit now.)
Water precipitation is not per resident, and there is no information of resident density. Hence the two quantities are not comparable.
![[OC] Annual Precipitation and Domestic Water Use](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/r30v2zluxc3f1-1920x1024.jpeg)
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Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20250130212754/https://www.usa.com/rank/us–average-precipitation–state-rank.htm
https://www.neefusa.org/story/water/home-water-use-united-states
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the “water used per resident”, is that only considering residential water use, or wrapping agricultural use in there too? Seeing AZ apparently use about 4x as much per capita as NM, and at least 2x CA just feels like it might be off
Something doesn’t make sense. I don’t see how DC, almost entirely a city, has such high per-capita water use. And I can’t find its numbers on the sources provided.
Seattle is known as the rainy city, yet gets less rain than most all east coast cities
Strange to see that some of the places laden with water (MN, WI, ME, AK) have all sorts of water everywhere yet use the least per resident.
Your average precipitation for South Dakota is wildly inaccurate. Wherever you pulled your data from isn’t counting snow as precipitation? Regardless I’m sure there are a number of states misrepresented here.
Kind of a strange map. I read OP’s summary of what constitutes “domestic water use,” and I can’t figure out why there’s so much variance. Precipitation doesn’t seem to map to water usage very reliably.
You’d think people are eating, drinking, bathing, and pooping– at least on average– the same across the country. So lawn/garden and pool maintenance seem like logical culprits, but pool ownership maps aren’t really correlated with this, either. Is it just how much people water their personal gardens and lawns? You’d still think that’d correlate with precipitation pretty well, though.
I can’t figure out the scale of those domestic water use circles. The gallon count is not proportional to the diameter of the circle, nor the area. And some states have circle sizes that aren’t in the legend. Just my opinion, but if you’re going to use a shape with area, like a circle, the area should be in proportion to the quantity.
This has to be based upon irrigation and pool use per person. You can see that the water use is more or less inverse the precipitation. The water use is also low where pools are less prevalent in the north and higher in the south where you can use them nearly 12 months.
Does this take into account snow melt? Idaho gets a TON of snowfall in the northern half of the state which melts throughout the year and flows through various rivers in the state, providing water for agriculture use.
The ones I find most interesting are the differences in water usage between Louisiana and Mississippi, in the 86 gallon/day category, and in Alabama and Florida, in the 68 gallon/day category, despite them being in the same, highest annual precipitation category.
The explanation for the higher usage in western states seems to be that they’re watering their lawns a lot more, but I don’t see any difference between AL and MS there. In my experience people rarely use sprinkler systems in either state, though naturally I haven’t taken any scientific study of it.
Poor Hawaii. Almost the entire state was obliterated by domestic water use.
This is hurting my brain, especially considering the really cogent comments.
Nothing seems to make a lot of sense, but the takeaway seems to be that lawn maintenance is a waste of water. As someone who planted and maintains a drought friendly yard, I agree.
Still the water usage in California actually seems low. There is an enormous amount of agricultural land that needs water, and many in Southern California will *not* give up their nice green lawns despite living in a desert. So I guess not flushing our toilets is paying off. Yeah us.
(For the people not raised during the first bad drought, kids were taught: If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down. A ***lot*** of those kids still follow that rule. It’s a habit now.)
Water precipitation is not per resident, and there is no information of resident density. Hence the two quantities are not comparable.
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