US Drought Monitor
After good rains last week across parts of the northern Plains, dryness followed this week across most of eastern South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas.

Unseasonably cool weather continues to delay impacts thus far as 30-90 day deficits (25-75% of normal across the region) are starting to mount considerably for many parts of these states heading into summer.

This has led to some changes this week in the form of expanding D1-D2 in eastern Nebraska as well as in the southern Panhandle out west. D1 also expanded in southeastern South Dakota, although some trimming of D0 on the northernmost flank of D0 in eastern South Dakota is also noted this week as they have been wetter than those counties in the southeast.

Kansas continues to set the southern edge of the intense drought that seems to be waking up and pushing rapidly north along with warmer temperatures. A large expansion of D3 now covers nearly the entire southern half of Kansas and D4 is slowly pushing north out of Oklahoma. Soil moisture and groundwater levels are hurting well in front of the peak demand season as the cumulative impacts of such an intense multi-year drought are already glaringly evident, and it’s only early May. Precipitation totals on the year are running just 25-50% of normal, or worse, for many locales across southern Kansas.

The story is even bleaker in the southern Plains, where the heat and drought described above for Kansas are even more pronounced and entrenched across western Oklahoma and much of Texas as well.

Expansion has begun to happen in earnest now that Mother Nature has turned up the furnace, which will do the landscape no favors with summer not here yet. Expansion of D2-D4 is noted across western Oklahoma and all changes in Texas are for the worse this week as well, with expansion of D0-D4 found statewide and D3 and D4 covering large portions of southern, central, north-central and the Panhandle of Texas. Streamflow and groundwater levels are hurting given the long duration and sustained intensity of this drought, which is now going on close to four years. Winter wheat has also been hard hit by hard freezes and the more recent triple-digit heat. Lack of range and pasture land, as well as fire, are the other main impacts already being reported early this year.