The Zambezi Riparian Region (ZRR) is a lifeline and home to ∼40 million people who depend heavily on the river basin for their livelihood. It also furnishes 8 of its riparian countries with goods and services on which hydropower production and food security anchor. The sustainability of the ZRR is threatened by extreme climate events. Here, we interrogate consecutive dry days (CDDs), an effective metric of extreme climatic events with implications on drought-driven water availability. We use ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) to understand CDDs.