Drought plows on

Did you happen to think that the drought plaguing the central United States had eased?  If so, not much.  According to this report, it's still pretty bad, and unless there's a bit of a shift in the weather, probably going to stay that way.

Withering drought still plaguing half of America

There's a nice graphic image showing the highlights, but it's a PDF and I can't reproduce it here.  So here's a summary statement.  This article showed up on April 4.

"Weekly drought figures released Thursday by the US Drought Monitor, a joint project of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the USDA and several other government and academic partners, show the situation has worsened slightly from last week, with nearly 52% of the continental US now suffering from a moderate drought or worse. Below-average winter snow pack and rainfall are keeping much of the country in a holding pattern. No measurable precipitation fell on most of central and northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, central and northern Iowa, southwestern Minnesota, and the Louisiana Bayou last week. Rain that fell in the West did nothing to alleviate the drought there; in fact, parts of western Oregon and southwestern Washington have reported their driest start to a calendar year on record. The forecast for the next two weeks? Dry and dry again."

I have a feeling we're going to feel the bite of this during the year.