Drought Conditions in the High Plains Region-Update August 16

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, beneficial rain continued to fall across the High Plains Region this past week. Although not all areas are receiving rain, the areas that have improved their drought conditions considerably.

Improvements continued for Kansas this week, with 43.16% of the state free of drought and abnormally dry (D0) conditions. The western half of the state received much needed rain helping upgrade many locations by one category. The exceptional (D4) drought area was reduced from 24.42% of the state to 16.47% and all other categories were reduced by at least 2%.

In Colorado, conditions continue to improve was well. D4 area was reduced about 5% this week to total, just 3.04% of the state. Also, in the north-central portion of the state D0 was removed and some severe (D2) drought was upgraded to moderate (D1) drought.

With recent rainfall in western South Dakota, there have been ample improvements. All areas had a one category upgrade this past week and extreme (D3) drought was all but eliminated. Furthermore, less than 1% of South Dakota is in a D2 condition. Although there were beneficial rains in the western half of the state the northeastern corner didn’t fare so well. A large portion of D0 was reintroduced tying in with the D0 that has remained steady in North Dakota over the past few weeks.

Wyoming and Nebraska had more subtle changes this week. In Wyoming, D0 was downgraded to D1 in the northwest corner of the state and some D0 returned along the northeastern border.  In Nebraska, some D3 was upgraded in the north-central part of the state and a small portion of D1 was upgrade to D0 in the south central portions of the state.

To learn more about the U.S. Drought Monitor, please see: http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu

To see the U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook, please see the Climate Prediction Center here:http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/sdo_summary.html

To see the areas of agriculture affected by the drought, please see the USDA link: http://www.usda.gov/oce/weather/Drought/AgInDrought.pdf

To see the impacts of the drought, please see the Drought Impact Reporter here: http://droughtreporter.unl.edu/

      Drought Condition (Percent Area): High Plains Region