We've all felt the heat this summer, but what does it actually mean for Raleigh? Today we're joined by Raleigh Sustainability Officer Megan Anderson and Raleigh Water Assistant Director Ed Buchan to talk about how extreme heat and drought are affecting our community, how the city is responding, and what residents can do to help.

From a water perspective, typically when you have drought conditions, you can see some increased demands.

And so that's for a number of reasons, one of which cooling towers, for instance, for large campuses, large buildings, they will evaporate more water than they do during cooler weather.

But those demands are relatively small overall.

The big driver in demand tends to be irrigation.

Of course, when it's drier and hotter during a drought, oftentimes customers will irrigate more frequently and for longer periods of time.

So we've seen that in May and June.

What resources does your team have to monitor what's going on with the drought? How do you guys determine where the water levels, what restrictions we have and that kind of information?