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The Great Plains: Expansion is noted across most of the region this week as abnormally hot temperatures (5 to 10 degrees above normal) continue to plague the region, bringing stress to pastures, crops, livestock/wildlife, trees and humans alike. Rainfall during the last week was confined to small patches in the Black Hills and northeastern South Dakota and southeastern North Dakota. Those areas receiving the 2- to 3-inch rains were improved 1-category in the Dakotas. The same can't be said to the rest of the region as D1-D3 continue to advance across more of eastern Nebraska, southeastern South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. In Kansas and the Panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas, D4 has also expanded, given the intense conditions and extreme impacts being observed. These areas can't seem to shake off last year's drought and have now been dragged back into it this year, with the exception being southeastern Texas, which has continued to see a much more favorable wet pattern the past several months.
In addition to the large geographic footprint of this year's drought, the quick onset and rapid ramping up of intensity, coupled with extreme temperatures and subsequent impacts, has really left an imprint on those affected and has set this drought apart from anything we have seen at this scale over the past several decades
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
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