Water resources are typically managed at the catchment scale, yet little information can be found on the spatial coherence of hydrological droughts within a catchment. We often operate under the assumption that drought conditions detected at a stream gauge indicate that the entire upstream hydrographic network is experiencing those conditions simultaneously. The objective of this study was to describe the spatial coherence of hydrological droughts within a catchment. Based on retrospective streamflow estimates across 6718 reaches over 52 years, we assessed the spatial extent of hydrological droughts within 109 catchments (drainage area between 400 and 21900 km2) in southern Quebec, Canada. We identified and characterized drought events using the Standardized Streamflow Index (SSI). Widespread drought events were generally more severe. On average, the severity of widespread (extent ~ 100 % of stream network) events is approximately doubled compared to very localized events (extent < 10 % of stream network). Still, we highlight the fact that hydrological droughts are not always spatially coherent at the catchment scale, with 26 % of events being localized (less than 25 % of the stream network experiencing drought). Additionally, we show that using a single hydrometric station to describe hydrological droughts may lead to a misrepresentation of catchment-scale conditions: when using the most downstream reach to identify drought events in a catchment, an average of 30 % of events per catchment were undetected. Overall, findings stress the need to better consider the spatial variability in drought conditions when managing surface waters in cold, humid catchments.