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Drought Expands in South Dakota

Dry enough for you? According to UNL’s U.S. Drought Monitorsince last week, drought has expanded in South Dakota, with a fair chunk of north central South Dakota now reaching the third step—”Severe Drought”—on the five-step drought scale:

US Drought Monitor 2017.06.06
US Drought Monitor 2017.06.06

Dry conditions prevail over all of North Dakota and almost everywhere in South Dakota except the area where Patrick Lalley thinks Billie Sutton should do all of his campaigning.

50.52% of South Dakota is in that orange D2 range. 78.92% of our state is in D0–D2, 20 percentage points more than last week. By UNL’s figuring, those dry conditions include 50.7% of our state’s population.

By those numbers, this drought is not unusual. More South Dakotans were living under drought conditions last August, through the winter and spring of 2015, and briefly during the planting season in 2014.

11 Comments

  1. jerry 2017-06-08 16:28

    Rains come in 3 to 4 inch storms and then hot winds after to dry it out again with temps in the 90’s and above for this week anyway. Hay ain’t cheap so feeding livestock is a tough situation. I look to see cattle heading to market right quick like.

  2. mike from iowa 2017-06-08 16:39

    You fools may end up drinking crude oil, yet.

  3. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-06-08 17:00

    Bath, just eight miles east of my house, got three inches of rain Tuesday. We got nothing.

  4. Greg "Comrade" Deplorable 2017-06-08 22:11

    Its too bad, hopefully patterns change, but this is South Dakota and not Minn or Iowa.
    We tend to dry out more often than not.
    All that ground that got broke up from the ethanol boom should’ve stayed as grass.

  5. Porter Lansing 2017-06-08 22:56

    Colorado could offer to send our fire fighting air tankers, if you have wildfires but they were paid for with marijuana tax money. Probably rather burn to the ground over sacrificing conservative principles, huh? 😳

  6. mike from iowa 2017-06-09 08:11

    ? Every year there are expansive forest/grass fires everywhere. Every year there are complaints we don’t have enough fire fighting aircraft. Instead of wasting billions on redundant/unwanted military baloney, why not buy enough fire fighting planes and stock them at AFB around the West and Midwest to handle the job?

  7. Robert McTaggart 2017-06-09 08:21

    There you go again. Promoting the use of more fossil fuel ;^).

  8. Nick Nemec 2017-06-09 11:09

    This drought will get worse before it gets better. It’s shaping up to be one of the worse in my lifetime.

  9. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2017-06-09 11:38

    The Governor has activated the “State Drought Task Force”:

    Task Force members will coordinate the exchange of drought information among government agencies as well as agriculture, fire and water-supply organizations. Officials say the exchange of information will allow the task force to better monitor the development and seriousness of the drought. The task force also will evaluate the impact of drought on economic sectors of the state.

    State government agencies represented on the Drought Task Force include the: Governor’s Office, Department of Agriculture, Department of Public Safety, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Game, Fish and Parks, South Dakota National Guard and Bureau of Information and Telecommunications [Governor’s office, press release, 2017.06.08].

    Thus, the State Drought Task Force appears to be various departments getting together and doing what we’re doing: talking about the weather.

  10. jerry 2017-06-09 11:38

    With the snow pack run off, the Missouri should have good water, unless there is an oil leak. The biggest problem I can see is where the money is going to be coming from for antiquated limited rural water systems that are going to be utilized to the max and for drought relief for producers. NOem, Thune and Rounds have positioned themselves in such a way as to choke all of those resources off.

  11. Jenny 2017-06-09 13:29

    I wish I could bring that MN rain to Dakota Territory.

Comments are closed.