While precipitation and drought improvement was ongoing in the Southeast and parts of the Northeast, very dry and mild weather continued across the middle third of the Plains. Since early October, less than half of normal precipitation has fallen across eastern Colorado, western Kansas, northern Texas, and much of Oklahoma, accumulating deficits of 2-4 inches.
Although the past 90-days are typically a dry time of year, the lack of normal precipitation, above-normal temperatures, and gusty winds have exacerbated conditions, with impacts worse than what the indices and data are depicting. For example, NASS/USDA Oklahoma winter wheat conditions rated poor or very poor went from 12 percent on Nov. 27 to 25 percent on Jan. 1, while topsoil moisture rated short to very short rose from 55 percent on Nov. 27 to 70 percent on Jan. 1.
There have been numerous reports of small ponds and watering holes drying up or very low in western, central, and northeastern sections of the state. As a result, D1 was expanded into south-central Oklahoma, D2 was expanded across the central and northeastern parts of the state and into northeastern Texas, and D3 was added to east-central Oklahoma and northwestern Arkansas where the deficits and SPIs were the worst. The only other degradation in the Plains was a slight increase in D0 in extreme south Texas. In contrast, enough rain fell across central and eastern Texas that some 1-category improvements were made.  Read more at droughtmonitor.unl.edu…