Drought Conditions in the High Plains Region-Update June 10th, 2014

Just like we had predicted towards the end of May, all the rain these past couple of weeks has helped our region immensely! Areas in western Nebraska saw between two and five inches of rain in the past seven days, central and eastern Kansas saw three to six inches, and even drought-stricken southwestern Kansas received up to three inches in some spots. Overall the High Plains region had a very wet, beneficial week.

Since June 3^rd, nearly 2% of the region officially moved out of all drought categories. The moderate drought category (D1-D4) dropped by more than 6% which is really quite impressive. In the High Plains the severe drought category (D2-D4) dropped by an astounding 7.1%, D3-D4 (extreme drought) decreased by 4%, and exceptional drought (D4) decreased by half of a percent.

Nebraska and Kansas saw the most improvement. Nowhere in Kansas is considered to be in exceptional drought anymore, whereas last week 2.38% of the state was in this category.  The severe, extreme, and exceptional categories dropped by a combined 24% which greatly benefitted Kansas. Nebraska on the other hand had 6.8% of the state emerge from the drought. As well only .01% of the state is now in extreme drought or worse (D3-D4) while last week over 7% of the state was in this category.

It looks like for the next seven days the eastern part of our region will once again get some much needed rain, with some areas looking at greater than three inches, according to the Weather Prediction center’s Quantitative Precipitation Forecast. I remain hopeful that we will see even more drought improvement in our area over the week.

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