Drought conditions still increasing in Nebraska, despite recent snowfall

Listen: Nebraska Public Media’s Jackie Ourada discusses drought conditions with National Drought Mitigation Center Climatologist Brian Fuchs.

A winter storm left a trail of snow spanning from Nebraska’s panhandle to the Missouri River. While Nebraskans have finally been able to shake off the dust from their snow blowers and trusty plastic snow scoops, most of the state still hasn’t seen enough consistent snowfall this winter to undo drying conditions.

“The moisture is welcomed, but it really didn’t put a dent into the dry winter that we’ve been experiencing up to this point,” said Brian Fuchs, a Climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center. “It’s not going to be one event. It’s not going to be one snowstorm.”

The National Drought Mitigation Center, based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, displayed worsening drought conditions in its weekly drought map update on Feb. 13, despite several rounds of snowfall so far this year. The center’s map showed moderate drought touching 91% of the state. Conditions are worse in northern and northwestern Nebraska, where 48% of the land is experiencing severe or extreme drought.

Researchers will be watching for consistent snowfall or rainfall over the next few months, not one or two weather events, which would ease the dryness but not clear it altogether. Without more consistent moisture over an extended period, Fuchs expects dry conditions will continue, which could further strain the cattle market, force farmers to pull more irrigation water to feed their crops and trim down water supply in urban areas further down the Platte River.

Fuchs said the drought’s grip on Nebraska started tightening last fall, which set back many parts of the state heading into 2025.

“Farmers and ranchers in our state are really paying attention to what they are going to be doing come March, come April,” Fuchs said. “We can get through a dry fall and a dry winter, but it really means that we’re setting the stage up for the spring already being behind in our precipitation.”

He added the degrading conditions in northwest Nebraska are especially concerning, considering the region is prime cattle country real estate. In 2023, the United States Department of Agriculture estimated that ranchers had more than half a million head of cattle between Nebraska’s Sioux, Dawes, Cherry, Box Butte and Sheridan counties, which are all currently seeing severe or extreme drought conditions.

“Conditions up there are somewhat dire,” Fuchs said. “If this dryness continues on the map, we only have one more category to get into, and that’s D4 Exceptional Drought. We’re as bad as it can get outside of one more jump up in categories or intensity. It’s a part of the state that we’ve been watching. It’s been an accumulation of dryness – not just one year or two years, but multiple years of dryness.”

Nebraska cattle rancher Craig Uden said the ongoing drought is leading the morning coffee conversations in agriculture circles. Uden runs a cow-calf operation near Lexington – a persistently dry region in southwest Nebraska, which saw drought conditions increase in the newest drought monitor map.

“The Drought Monitor map continues to get a little more yellow and a little more red through the state of Nebraska, as well as in some of our neighboring states,” Uden said. “It’s been a challenge to see our industry grow just because of the lack of moisture.”

The cattle market is still bruised from desperately dry weather between 2021 and 2023. In 2022, several cattle producers lost animals to brutal heat waves. In that same year, ranchers and farmers across the Great Plains and the Midwest struggled with the high cost of feed, with many ultimately choosing to take their cattle to the markets early. Many female cows were caught up in the 2022 market swarm, which meant fewer calves coming up for sale later down the line. The impact eventually trickled down to consumers who are still feeling the effects of a smaller U.S. cattle herd.

“Ultimately, we rely on Mother Nature to provide the water to carry our cattle throughout the summer, so we will need moisture,” Uden said.

The 2022 drought year brought Nebraska’s beef cow inventory to a record low in 2024, marking the fifth consecutive year of declining cattle numbers. The Nebraska Farm Bureau said 2025 could bring more profits to Nebraska cow-calf operators who may think about expanding their herds again. Uden knows some ranchers are wanting to expand their herds following the easier weather year that was 2024.

“I think people are really optimistic about the industry and about the growth.” Uden said. “They really want to expand, but I think they’re going to be just a little bit on the cautious side as far as how they stick their necks out this year until we have a little more favorable conditions, as far as moisture.”

Farmers, who often sell feed to ranchers, hope they won't have those dry conditions either. After several years of drought-induced crop losses, rainfall rebounded in 2024 – even to the point of flooding several farmlands across Nebraska.

Farmers who weren’t wiped out by torrential rains basked in a plentiful season. It was a resounding resurrection from the dusty seasons just a few years ago, when Natural Resource Districts limited the amount of water a farmer could pull from ground. Desperation in those drought years was thought to be the reason why there were several cases of stolen water from canals in drought-ridden areas.

The precipitation Nebraska receives during the remaining weeks of this winter season and this spring will help farmers gauge how much water, if any, they will have to pull from the ground later this year to water their crops. If rain showers sufficiently feed crops during the historically dryer months this summer, farmers won’t need to pump as much water to irrigate their crops, which gives more supply to urban pockets further downstream.

“As an agricultural state, how much land is needed to be irrigated and where that water is coming from actually impacts the entire state,” Fuchs said. “As we’ve seen in wetter summers, irrigation isn’t needed as much, and so more of that water is able to make its way across the state. [It] gets to Grand Island, gets to Fremont, and past Columbus and then finally to Omaha and in Lincoln.”

The National Drought Mitigation Center is keeping a close eye on dry conditions in Wyoming and Colorado. The amount of snowpack in those states will determine how plump the Platte River gets this year.

Fuchs, along with many ranchers and farmers, is hoping moisture patterns pick back up soon.

“And that’s very possible,” Fuchs said. “We know how things can change in Nebraska quickly, and we’re going to watch that.”

The National Drought Mitigation Center will publish its next drought monitor update Thursday, Feb. 20.