After a brief respite of rain<\/a>, drought conditions have inched back up \u2014 especially in the panhandle and southwestern Oklahoma \u2014 this week’s update<\/a> from the U.S. Drought Monitor show.<\/p> In south-central Oklahoma, the water levels at the lakes that supply water to the City of Duncan have dropped below 50 percent, and local officials say the \u201cdire\u201d situation could lead to stricter water rationing. The Duncan Banner<\/em>\u2019s Derrick Miller reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n On Tuesday, water levels at those two lakes were at 52 percent. Waurika Lake, which is Duncan\u2019s primary water supply, was at 47 percent on Aug. 31. Public Works Director Scott Vaughn said city ordinance stipulates the need for Stage 3 water rationing, which only allows for watering one day out of the week, if Lake Fuqua and Lake Humphreys drop below 50 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote> Since May, Duncan residents have been under \u201cStage 2\u201d water restrictions, which restrict outdoor watering to every other day between midnight and 9 a.m.<\/p> Duncan received a lot of rain in July \u2014 as did much of Oklahoma \u2014 but the showers did little to fill the city\u2019s reservoirs, the paper reports.<\/p>\n StateImpact Oklahoma is a partnership among Oklahoma\u2019s public radio stations and produces journalism in the public interest, essential to an informed electorate. Help support informative, in-depth journalism with a donation online<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a brief respite of rain, drought conditions have inched back up \u2014 especially in the panhandle and southwestern Oklahoma \u2014 this week’s update from the U.S. Drought Monitor show.In south-central Oklahoma, the water levels at the lakes that supply water to the City of Duncan have dropped below 50 percent, and local officials say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[423,427],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16165"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16188,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16165\/revisions\/16188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}