The record flooding has ended the disastrous drought in some, but not all, parts of the Midwest, federal drought experts reported Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Far West is still suffering from a lack of wintertime rain and snow, adding to drought and wildfire worries there.
Thursday's U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly federal website that tracks drought across the country, noted, surprisingly, that the Upper Midwest remains in a low-level drought, as the region continues to deal with long-term precipitation deficits, despite the seasonal spring flooding.
It's been very cold in Minnesota and the Dakotas, which "still have a layer of frozen ground 1 or 2 feet down," says U.S. Department of Agriculture meteorologist Eric Luebehusen, the author of this week's monitor. This means that much of the moisture from the rain and snow did not soak in, he says, which exacerbated the flooding.
In fact, the monitor reports that more than 90% of the state of Minnesota remains either abnormally dry or in a drought. "We're taking it slow with drought recovery in that area," he says.
But other Midwest states such as Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee -- all of which were in a drought last summer -- are now entirely drought-free.
Nationally, 46.9% of the contiguous U.S. is in a drought. "Drought coverage is now down 14.19 percentage points since the beginning of 2013 and down 18.55 points from the record high of 65.45% on Sept. 25, 2012," said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Drought in the Southeast is now almost entirely gone, Rippey noted. North Carolina is now completely free of drought for the first time since November.
"However, there is an increasingly sharp gradient between drought and non-drought areas; currently that line stretches roughly from the Texas-Louisiana border to Lake Superior, with drought to the west of that demarcation zone," he says.
Worries are now shifting to the West: The water year in the Southwest was "abysmal," Luebehusen says.
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