News•April 10, 2014

U.S. Drought Retreats 15 Percent in One Year

When it comes to drought, what a difference a year makes.

The area of the contiguous U.S. affected by drought has dropped nearly 13 percent over the past year, and the area of the Lower 48 under abnormally dry or drier conditions has dropped nearly 15 percent, according to Thursday’s U.S. Drought Monitor.

Credit: U.S. Drought Monitor

The area under extreme and exceptional drought conditions — the most severe categories of drought — has dropped to about 9.9 percent from 16.7 percent a year ago.

Thanks to the cold, snowy winter throughout much of the Midwest and eastern U.S., the driest conditions have mostly shifted in the last year from concentrating in the northern Great Plains to ravaging bone-dry California, a state unlikely to see long-term relief from drought anytime soon.

A year ago, a line from the Minnesota-Iowa border straight south divided the country between mostly wet in the east and mostly dry in the west, said National Drought Mitigation Center climatologist Brian Fuchs, author of this week’s drought monitor.

The cool, wet winter alleviated the most severe drought conditions through much of Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and northern Colorado, while West Coast states became generally drier through the winter, he said.

While the big drought story of the year has been the devastating California drought that probably won't be going anywhere anytime soon, the other major drought story is the pocket of the Great Plains where years of persistent exceptionally dry conditions in southeast Colorado, northeast New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas and Oklahoma have been causing major dust storms in the areas ravaged during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, Fuchs said.

“We’re not going to see that again,” he said, referring to the massive dust storms during the Dust Bowl. “But we are seeing this movement of soils because of drought conditions in that region.”

Over the past four years, some areas of that region have missed out on two years’ worth of rainfall, and any major precipitation the region is likely to receive anytime soon won’t be enough to make up the difference, he said.

The forecast for the remainder of April has drought coverage across much of the U.S. continuing its retreat.RELATEDWarming Temperatures Could Dry Out One Third of Planet
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The March 31 monthly drought outlook forecasts drought conditions disappearing from western Oregon and much of the central Great Plains but persisting or intensifying in the places already stricken hard — the Southwest and California.

The National Drought Mitigation Center is forecasting an active weather pattern over much of the Midwest and Southeast over the next week, with drenching thunderstorms likely there and in the Northern Rockies.

Much of the East will likely be cooler than normal over the next 10 days, but high temperatures in parts of the west could be as much as 12°F above normal, especially in the Great Basin and Northern California.

“Where we’re at in the spring, it’s where we’ll be at next fall,” Fuchs said, referring to the California drought. “The drought we see is pretty much what we’re going to keep.”