Recent rains have helped to lessen the scope of the drought across the nation. Brad Rippey, U.S. Agriculture Department Meteorologist, says the area of the U.S. suffering from a drought went down to 57.64 percent of the contiguous United States. That’s down 1.2 percent.
“That takes us back to our lowest drought coverage since early July 2012 showing that we are finally making some progress this winter against the drought,” Rippey said. “Consequently, we still see the exceptional drought, or D4, drought coverage nearly steady at 6.36 percent.”
The declines in the drought over the last week were recorded in the lower Midwest and parts of the southeast.