Eastern South Dakota Slips into Moderate Drought

According to the High Plains Regional Climate Center, conditions in eastern South Dakota continue to deteriorate with lack of rainfall. The area of D1 continues to expand southward along the Minnesota border. D1 area increased about 4.5 percent and now totals 29.92 percent of the state.

North Dakota’s drought status improved slightly, according to the HPRCC, with a 1.6 percent reduction in its D1 area.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, rain continued to fall this week in Colorado and neighboring states. This continued the reduction of drought in those areas. Unfortunately these rains were not wide spread in the High Plains Region.

In the region as a whole, area of moderate drought or worse conditions improved by almost 5 percent this week, to total 49.42 percent. Slight improvements were made in other categories as well, but those reductions were around 1 percent. As with last week, 0.30 percent of the Region still remains in exceptional drought (D4).

In Colorado, areas of abnormally dry (D0) conditions were removed in north-central Colorado. In southwestern Colorado a large area of D1 was upgraded to D0 and an area of severe drought was upgraded to D1. With these improvements, only 40.26 percent of the state remains in a D1 or worse condition.

Rains that fell in Colorado moved into the panhandle of Nebraska and southeastern Wyoming. These rains in Wyoming helped to upgrade some of the extreme drought (D3) area near the Nebraska border. In the panhandle of Nebraska a widespread one-category upgrade of D3 took place. This reduced the area of D3 in the state from 21.00 percent last week to 11.04 percent this week. All other areas in both states remained the identical to last week.

In Kansas, conditions remained nearly the same as compared to last week. The only change was a removal of D0 area in eastern Kansas that totaled less than 1 percent