Winter wheat is dying in Kansas fields that should be green by now. Ranchers in New Mexico are selling cattle they cannot afford to feed. Reservoir levels along the Colorado River system are dropping weeks ahead of the season when mountain snowmelt is supposed to refill them. Across roughly 63% of the contiguous United States, drought rated moderate to exceptional on the federal scale has taken hold, and the first three months of 2026 were the driest the nation has recorded in 131 years of continuous measurement.
Federal forecasters say the parched footprint is more likely to grow than shrink as spring advances, leaving farmers, water managers, and fire agencies bracing for a summer that could test infrastructure already running on thin margins.
NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, which maintains climate records dating to January 1895, confirmed in its March 2026 national climate summary that the January-through-March period was the driest on record for the contiguous United States across the full 131-year dataset. The rankings are built from precipitation totals collected at thousands of weather stations and compared against long-term regional averages.
March 2026 alone ranked among the driest Marches nationally. California recorded both its warmest and driest March on a statewide basis since record-keeping began, a combination that accelerated snowpack loss in the Sierra Nevada at the worst possible time.
The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor, published through Drought.gov, puts the damage in geographic terms: about 63% of the Lower 48 falls within drought categories D1 (moderate) through D4 (exceptional). The affected zone stretches from the Pacific Coast through the Intermountain West and deep into the central Plains, covering agricultural regions responsible for a large share of the nation’s wheat, cattle, and irrigated produce.
Why forecasters expect it to get worse
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center stated in its spring outlook that drought is likely to expand across the western U.S. and parts of the Plains through the spring months. The agency pointed to three reinforcing drivers:
For farmers on the central Plains, the timing is brutal. Winter wheat, planted in the fall and dependent on spring moisture to fill grain heads, is showing visible stress across Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Texas Panhandle. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s weekly crop condition reports will offer the first systematic look at how much acreage has been lost or downgraded, but anecdotal reports from county extension agents already describe fields that may not be worth harvesting.
Ranchers face a parallel crisis. Rangeland forage that normally greens up in March and April has barely emerged in parts of the Southwest and southern Plains, forcing producers to buy supplemental feed at elevated prices or reduce herd sizes. Livestock sell-offs driven by drought tend to depress cattle prices in the short term and tighten beef supply months later.
Western water managers are watching reservoir gauges with growing concern. The Colorado River system, which supplies water to roughly 40 million people across seven states, entered spring with storage levels already below target after several years of below-average inflows. Low Sierra Nevada snowpack threatens California’s State Water Project allocations, though the state’s Department of Water Resources had not issued a formal emergency declaration tied to the 2026 spring shortfall as of late May 2026.
No comments:
Post a Comment