Drought deepened during “quite the dry week” in the High Plains, said the Drought Monitor on Thursday. “Flash drought conditions are impacting the region, especially in the Dakotas, where warm, dry, and windy conditions have provided ideal harvest conditions but have started taking a toll on the region.”
Some 76.2 percent of land in the six-state region, stretching from Kansas and Colorado to North Dakota, was in moderate to exceptional drought, up from 73.8 percent the previous week. “Continued dryness over Kansas, where portions of southwest Kansas had their driest October on record, allowed for the expansion of extreme and exceptional drought this week,” said the weekly report. Drought also worsened in the Dakotas.
In Kansas, No. 1 in winter wheat, 37.6 percent of the state was listed in exceptional drought, the most severe rating on the four-step scale of drought conditions. Last week, 33.4 percent of the state was in exceptional drought. Overall, 92.6 percent of Kansas was in drought.
Some 89 percent of South Dakota was in drought, an increase of 11 points in one week.