PHOENIX (AZFamily) — With all of the rain last month through the start of October, it’s not shocking that Arizona’s drought has improved.

However, the amount of improvement in the short-term drought over the past month is impressive. (It should be noted that long-term drought remains in rough shape.)

Here is the current drought status from the U.S. Drought Monitor .

Notice the stripe of red in eastern Arizona and another small area of red that extends into parts of Maricopa County. That shows “extreme drought,” which is the second-worst drought category. Think of extreme drought as a four out of five on the drought scale.

Putting some numbers on the map above, about 16% of Arizona is currently in extreme drought status or worse. The worst drought category is “exceptional drought”, b

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