Lincoln, Nebraska — The US Drought Monitor report shows a little bit of change in southeast O’Brien County in the last month.
It says that in mid-February, the corner of the county got a little drier. An oval-shaped spot of “no drought” covering southeast O’Brien, southwest Clay, Northeast Cherokee and northwest Buena Vista counties developed in mid-December, but had changed to “abnormally dry” by mid to late February.
At this point, the four northwesternmost Iowa counties are mostly covered by the “abnormally dry” designation, except for the northwest half of Lyon County and the extreme northwest tip of Sioux County, which remain in Moderate Drouhght, or D1. Northwest Iowa is actually nearly the best-off when it comes to drought, with a large area of extreme drought (D3) in north-central to northeast Iowa, narrowing to a one-county-wide area in southeast Iowa before turning back west and expanding a bit. There is also a significant part of the state in severe drought (D2). There is an area of about half of two counties in extreme eastern Iowa that have no drought at all.
The U.S. Drought Monitor is produced through a partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
