GDACS, the European Commission and United Nations alert system, rates the likely humanitarian impact of this drought at its orange level. The rating is an automatic estimate, not a record of what has happened.
The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) has an orange alert in force for drought in The Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and El Salvador. GDACS records the event as beginning on 21 April 2026 and ending on 10 September 2026.
GDACS gives the area affected by agricultural drought as 596,197 square kilometres. That is the figure in the record and nothing has been derived from it.
GDACS assembled this alert from the Global Drought Observatory. An alert level is GDACS's own estimate of the humanitarian impact a hazard of this size is likely to have, calculated automatically from the hazard's measured extent and the population and vulnerability of the area. It is not a count of people affected, injured or killed, and this brief does not report any such count.
GDACS states that its information is indicative, that it should not be used for decision-making without other sources, and that it does not replace or override any warning issued by a national or local authority. Alert levels are revised as an event develops; any change to this record is shown in the revision history on this page.
Times
These are different things and are not interchangeable.
- Event occurred
- 21 April 2026, 00:00 UTC (as recorded by the source)
- Source last revised
- 12 September 2026, 05:57 UTC
- Published here
- 12 September 2026, 02:10 UTC
- Last changed here
- 12 September 2026, 06:04 UTC
Evidence
- Record identifier
DR:1027449- Retrieved
- 12 September 2026, 06:04 UTC
- Snapshot checksum
a594e8deeba5a06f3bc7a691ed09b51086e4dd44c0daffc597e11c8dbd930e8e
Where each figure above comes from (7 values)
Revision history
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12 September 2026, 06:04 UTC — The source revised its record
The source revised its record. The figures above now follow the revised record; the previous wording is kept below.
Show the wording this replaced
Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System issued an orange alert for drought in 8 countries
The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) has an orange alert in force for drought in The Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and El Salvador. GDACS records the event as beginning on 21 April 2026 and ending on 9 September 2026.
GDACS gives the area affected by agricultural drought as 596,197 square kilometres. That is the figure in the record and nothing has been derived from it.
GDACS assembled this alert from the Global Drought Observatory. An alert level is GDACS's own estimate of the humanitarian impact a hazard of this size is likely to have, calculated automatically from the hazard's measured extent and the population and vulnerability of the area. It is not a count of people affected, injured or killed, and this brief does not report any such count.
GDACS states that its information is indicative, that it should not be used for decision-making without other sources, and that it does not replace or override any warning issued by a national or local authority. Alert levels are revised as an event develops; any change to this record is shown in the revision history on this page.
-
12 September 2026, 02:10 UTC — First publication
Assembled from the source record listed under evidence. This record predates the start of this service's coverage and was added when the source was first read.
Limits of this brief
Orange and red alerts from the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System: floods, tropical cyclones, droughts, wildfires and volcanic activity. Green alerts are not reported — they are the great majority of what GDACS emits, eighty-five wildfire alerts in a single week in the week this source was built, and green means little or no humanitarian impact is expected. Earthquakes are not reported from GDACS at all: GDACS takes them from USGS, which this service already reads directly under its own magnitude rule, and publishing both would put one earthquake on the site twice from two records that can diverge after revision. An alert level is not a measurement of the hazard and not a count of anyone harmed. It is GDACS's automatic estimate of the humanitarian impact a hazard of that size is likely to have, calculated from the hazard's extent and the population and vulnerability of the area, and published within minutes of a detection. No brief here reports deaths, injuries, displacement or damage, because the record used does not establish them. A severity figure is published only where GDACS supplies a unit whose meaning has been checked. Floods and volcanic alerts arrive with a severity of zero and no unit at all, so no severity is shown for them and the brief says why. GDACS's own sentence describing a severity is never reproduced: for tropical cyclones it pairs a storm classification with a wind speed that contradicts it. GDACS states that its information is indicative, that it should not be used for decision-making without other sources, and that it does not replace any warning issued by a national or local authority. That statement appears on every brief.
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