Recent rain relieves eastern Nebraska dry spots, drought increases in western areas

After a brutally dry March that brought record wildfires and little moisture, April is delivering some relief in select parts of the state. But western and central Nebraska are continuing to slide deeper into drought.

The newest drought map released Thursday by the National Drought Mitigation Center shows about two dozen counties had drought conditions increase between April 7 and April 14. The degradations continue as Nebraska is coming off the warmest winter on record since the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

“We also saw some eastward expansion of extreme drought and more of the Sandhills,” Eric Hunt, an agricultural meteorologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said. “Now, I would say the majority of the Sandhills are in extreme drought. What’s not in extreme drought probably will be within another week or two, if we don’t get some decent moisture.”

But April, so far, is improving much of the eastern part of the state, which is home to acres of cropfields that depend on timely moisture. Areas including Gage, Otoe, Nemaha and Saunders counties received around 4 inches of rain for the first half of the month.

“Those areas really have actually had pretty good moisture this month, so I think that their prospects are pretty good for moisture,” Hunt said. “I think they’ve definitely gotten some decent recharge, and they can afford it. The upside is we can afford a dry May in those areas.”

There’s now a portion of eastern Nebraska, about 12%, that’s no longer experiencing drought. That’s a jump from 5% a week earlier. More relief could be on the way, but this time, for more of western and central parts of the state.

“It also looks like we’re going to cool off substantially in the latter portion of next week, so if we do get some moisture, we turn down the temperatures a little while, that would actually be the best thing on Earth for the pastures in that portion of the state,” Hunt said.

The moisture could come as planting season begins, but Hunt suspects they won’t mind getting a little precipitation after not seeing anything fall from the sky in months.

“My guess is most of the farmers would probably, gladly take a week off from planting just to get some moisture, because that means that they will have at least a little bit of reserve to start the season with. That also means that they probably will not have to irrigate to get things germinated.”