NDMC Droughts

Overview

The U.S. Drought Monitor is a map released every Thursday, showing parts of the U.S. that are in drought. The Drought Monitor has been a team effort since its inception in 1999, produced jointly by the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The USDA uses the drought monitor to trigger disaster declarations and eligibility for low-interest loans. The Farm Service Agency uses it to help determine eligibility for their Livestock Forage Program, and the Internal Revenue Service uses it for tax deferral on forced livestock sales due to drought. State, local, tribal and basin-level decision makers use it to trigger drought responses, ideally along with other more local indicators of drought.

Attributes

drought_intensity

Dryness (0) or Drought (1-4) intensity code. Human-readable descriptions of these codes are delivered in the drought_category property.

integer
drought_category

Human-readable description of the Dryness or Drought intensity code from the drought_intensity property.

string