For at least some portion of March 2022, 20 of the 24 South Central Nebraska counties were completely-or-partially assigned either Severe (D2) or Extreme (D3) Drought by the U.S. Drought Monitor as a steadily-worsening drought situation continued, marked by significant precipitation/snowfall deficits since late-fall 2021. March marked the second-straight month with at least D2 assigned to a portion of the area, but it was the first appearance of D3 within South Central Nebraska in exactly one year (since March 2021). Going into more county-based drought category detail, while D2 had already been introduced to parts of Thayer/Nuckolls counties in late-February, the areal coverage of D2 was significantly expanded in early-March to include at least portions of 16 more counties: Valley, Greeley, Nance, Sherman, Howard, Merrick, Polk, Dawson, Buffalo, Hall, Hamilton, York, Gosper, Phelps, Furnas and Harlan. As the month went on, further limited expansions of D2 also clipped small parts of Kearney and Fillmore counties (although the Fillmore D2 actually improved back to D1 only a week later, along with neighboring portions of Thayer/Nuckolls). As for D3, it was first introduced on the March 15th USDM into much of Greeley County along with surrounding portions of Valley, Sherman and Howard counties. Then on the 29th, this D3 was slightly expanded to include more of these counties (including all of Valley). Outside of the 20 aforementioned local counties officially assigned D2-or-worse for at least some portion of March, the remaining four counties at least spent all-or-most of the month in D1 Moderate Drought (Adams/Clay/Franklin/Webster). Although agricultural impacts of this worsening early-spring 2022 drought situation were held to a relative minimum due to occurring outside the growing season, the presence of very dry vegetation and lack of snow cover led to an uptick in wildfire activity. Fortunately, there were no truly large wildfires within South Central Nebraska during March, although the far northern fringes of a large fire in Jewell County KS on the afternoon of the 29th brushed into extreme southeastern Webster County.
Turning to March 2022 precipitation data, roughly 85 percent of the 24-county area received at least slightly below normal precipitation, with the only exception of slightly-above-normal totals focused mainly within the far south-southeastern counties of Webster, Nuckolls and Thayer. Most concerningly, several northern/western counties received less than half of normal March precipitation (most areas west/north of a line from Beaver City-Kearney-Osceola). However, within this zone, the very-driest local counties of all during March were Greeley and Valley, including official NWS observer totals of merely 0.19 in Greeley and 0.27 in Ord (unsurprisingly, corresponding to the two South Central Nebraska counties that saw the greatest D3 introduction). However, when looking farther back in time, the roots of this worsening drought situation could really be traced back to at least November 2021, as the five consecutive months from Nov. 2021-March 2022 featured prevailing below normal precipitation nearly area-wide. However, more concerningly, roughly 80 percent of the area received less than one-half of normal Nov-March precipitation, and roughly 30 percent of it received less than ONE-THIRD of normal. The very-driest places over the course of these five months concentrated within far northern/western local counties, such as Valley, Greeley, Nance, Dawson and Gosper. As just a few examples of official cumulative Nov-March precipitation totals from NWS cooperative observers: 1) Ord: 0.85 (19 percent of normal...driest on record out of 115 years)...2) Greeley: 0.88 (21% of normal)...3) Elwood 8S: 1.20' (32% of normal).

Drought in KEARNEY, NEBRASKA
From 29-MAR-22 00:00:00 to 31-MAR-22 23:59:00 (CST-6)
Property damage: 0.00K
Crop damage: 0.00K
Reported by: Drought Monitor