The extent of the state's drought woes can be seen in these month-by-month maps from the past five years.
With very little rain the past few months, the drought situation in New Jersey has gotten progressively worse.
To help illustrate how the state's drought status has fared this year compared to the previous four years, we compiled month-by-month maps provided by the National Drought Mitigation Center and created a time-lapse photo.
The map's legend shows what each color on the maps represents. Essentially, darker colors indicate more serious drought conditions.
As of Thursday, 12 major reservoirs in northern New Jersey were operating at about 52 percent of their full capacity of 70.6 billion gallons of water, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. Their normal capacity in mid-November is usually about 68 percent.
Last week, the state's largest reservoir -- Round Valley Reservoir in Hunterdon County -- dropped to its lowest level ever recorded, prompting a local environmental group to urge Gov. Chris Christie to declare a drought emergency.
The reservoir was at 66.5 percent (36.57 billion gallons) of its 55 billion-gallon capacity, according to the New Jersey Water Supply Authority. The previous record was 67.2 percent of capacity, set on Nov. 28, 1982, when the state was under a drought emergency.
A drought emergency allows the state to order mandatory water-use restrictions. Currently, with 14 counties under a drought warning, the state can only urge residents and businesses to voluntarily conserve water.
The last time New Jersey declared a drought emergency was in 2001, which extended into part of 2002.
The 2016 drought warning covers Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex, Union and Warren counties. A drought watch remains active for Burlington, Camden, Gloucester and Salem, leaving only three counties with no official drought alerts: Atlantic, Cape May and Cumberland.
NJ Advance Media staff writer Carla Astudillo contributed to this report. Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LensReality or like him on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.