Drought expands across Nebraska, with 'extreme' category nearly doubling

Drought worsened significantly across Nebraska in the past week, but some relief could be on the way.

According to the latest Drought Monitor released by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Thursday, about 98% of the state is now in at least a moderate drought. That’s up from a little under 93% from the previous week.

But the real change was in the amount of the state covered by extreme drought, which is the second-worst category.

As of Thursday, nearly 43% of the state was in extreme drought, almost double the 22% from last week.

Extreme drought expanded significantly in the Panhandle, as well as in an area of central Nebraska stretching from Buffalo and Hall counties north all the way to the border with South Dakota.

The past three months have been some of the driest in Nebraska history, and those areas have been some of the hardest-hit.

For example, the National Weather Service office in Hastings reported earlier this week that Hastings had its second-driest first three months of the year on record with only 0.77 inches of rain for the entire period. Kearney actually had less rain, 0.52 inches, even though it was only the fourth-driest January-March on record. Grand Island had 0.78 inches, which ranked as the sixth-driest.

All three cities saw less than 30% of their normal precipitation for the period.

Ryan Pfannkuch, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hastings, said the extremely dry conditions actually started last fall.

“November and December were also very dry,” Pfannkuch said. “So really, we're looking at five months of dryness that got us to where we are now with the expanding drought.”

Farther west, the conditions are similar.

North Platte received only 0.76 inches of rain for January-March, the lowest for that period since 2015. Scottsbluff saw 0.69 inches, its lowest total for those three months this century.

That lack of rain has led to a huge expansion of drought since the first of the year. On Dec. 30, only 40% of the state was in moderate drought and no areas were in extreme drought.

Those expanding drought conditions helped fuel the worst wildfires in the state’s history last month. As of Thursday morning, the fires had burned more than 900,000 acres in western and central Nebraska, and a couple of them are still not fully contained.

Most of the rain fell east of where the fires were, but those areas did get some precipitation.

Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 2 said in a Facebook update Thursday that the fire-affected areas received anywhere from a few hundredths of an inch of rain to as much as half an inch.

The rain was enough to convince Gov. Jim Pillen to rescind a statewide burn ban that was originally issued March 13 and then extended two weeks later. Pillen said in a news release that, "conditions contributing to an elevated wildfire threat have diminished to an acceptable degree."

Eric Hunt, a UNL agricultural meteorologist, said “some very beneficial” rain fell across the eastern third of the state, and he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the conditions shown in this week’s Drought Monitor “will be a low point for drought.”

“I would anticipate seeing some improvements on the map next week, but places in severe or extreme drought will be in drought for a while yet,” Hunt said in an email.

Hastings received more than 1.5 inches of rain Wednesday night and Thursday morning, while Grand Island, Kearney and Lincoln all got just over an inch.

Pfannkuch said the rain that fell Wednesday and Thursday was beneficial, and it could lead to some small improvements in next week’s drought monitor, but he said much more is needed.

“So, you know, drought – you've probably heard the saying, it's easy to slip into quickly, and it's tough to crawl out of a lot of times, and it's going to take a lot more of these, more widespread, at least, inch or more rains, to make a difference.”