US Drought Monitor and Summary, Jan. 23, 2018

D0-D1 were pulled back slightly in southeastern Texas, where more than an inch of rain fell this week, but otherwise, the South saw large areas of degradation. D0-D3 expanded in Oklahoma and Texas. Locally, 1-3 inches of rain fell across parts of southeastern Oklahoma to northern Arkansas, but the dryness was so severe here that the rain only staved off further deterioration.
The County Executive Director for Wagoner and Mayes Counties in Oklahoma reported that all of the winter wheat crops were in either poor or very poor condition, and some producers were selling cattle early due to poor grazing fields; the Oklahoma State Climatologist reported several counties have issued burn bans in response to a rash of fires which resulted, in part, from the prolonged drought.
As relayed by the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC), agricultural impacts from the drought are being felt in Utah, Kansas, and Oklahoma and include decreasing hay and soybean yields, deteriorating wheat and grazing conditions, and decreasing water supplies — ponds and wells going dry. Some of these effects started from moisture deficits dating back to summer 2017.
Some stations in the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma haven’t had any precipitation for the last 3 months, including Amarillo, Texas where the last day with measurable precipitation was Oct. 13, 2017, and Woodward, Oklahoma, which has gone more than 100 days without measurable precipitation.
Read more at droughtmonitor.unl.edu.