Drought conditions worsened across much of the Great Plains and Southwest this week while heavy precipitation brought relief to portions of the Midwest, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor. The U.S. Drought Monitor is jointly produced by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
A powerful storm system crossed from the Great Plains into the Great Lakes, bringing widespread rain and a historic blizzard to portions of the Upper Midwest, especially in northern Wisconsin and Michigan near Lake Superior. Total precipitation amounts exceeded 2 inches in a large area of the western Great Lakes, leading to improvements across much of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and parts of Missouri, Iowa, Indiana and northeast Ohio.
However, much of the Southwest and the central and southern Great Plains missed out on precipitation and instead dealt with dry, warm and windy conditions. Degradation in drought conditions was widespread across Nebraska and southern parts of South Dakota.
Deadly wildfire in Nebraska
A deadly wildfire in western Nebraska, the Morrill Fire, has burned a record amount of land for Nebraska wildfires. This fire, and others across Nebraska, occurred amid weather conditions favorable for fire growth and a background of worsening drought conditions.
The Great Plains of southwest Kansas and southeast Colorado also saw worsening drought and abnormal dryness this week, as precipitation deficits continued to mount along with warmer-than-normal temperatures. Large precipitation deficits and above-normal evaporative demand over the last several months led to extreme drought development in parts of the Black Hills in southwest South Dakota.
West faces continued snow drought
Current drought conditions in the West continued to be headlined by snow drought. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains and portions of the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico saw widespread worsening conditions. Some snow-water monitoring sites in the region have seen near-full or full melting of snowpack.
Degradations to ongoing drought and dryness were also widespread in Arizona, where warmer-than-normal temperatures combined with dry weather to worsen short-term precipitation deficits and support low streamflow levels. High-elevation parts of Arizona that usually have snow on the ground in mid-March are suffering from snow drought.
Exceptional drought developed along the Florida-Georgia state line, where soil moisture and precipitation deficits worsened and several streamflow gauges moved into record-low territory for mid-March.
Looking ahead, the forecast calls for mostly dry weather across a large swath of the contiguous U.S. through March 23, with below-normal precipitation favored from the Great Plains to the Desert Southwest and California.
