By Tom Latek
Kentucky Today
Continued hot and dry conditions have led to the drought situation deepening in Kentucky, according to the weekly U.S Drought Monitor report released on Thursday, including the first area designated as “Extreme Drought” so far this year.
Only 13.28 percent of the state is considered to have no drought, which is down from 15.42 percent last week.
Over 18 percent of Kentucky is “Abnormally Dry,” or D0 on the scale that goes from D0 up to D4 for “Exceptional Drought.” That is down from the 37.82 percent reported last week, but that is because more areas have seen conditions worsen.
Nearly half of Kentucky, 47.46 percent, is now in “Moderate Drought,” D1, an increase from the 44.14 percent that was in the previous report. D2, or “Serious Drought,” now includes 19.80 percent of the state, up seven and a half times the 2.61 percent last week.
Just under one percent of far Southwestern Kentucky is now designated D3, or “Extreme Drought.”
This is the first time D3 conditions have occurred in the state since the Drought Monitor issued on September 24, 2024. The D3 area includes all or parts of Calloway, Fulton, Graves and Hickman counties. No area is D4, as of this latest report.
“Rapidly worsening impacts, persistent subnormal rainfall and increasingly poor 30 to 90-day SPI values [Standardized Precipitation Index] warranted widespread degradations across the Ohio Valley,” said Adam Allgood with the National Weather Service. “Low humidity and warm temperatures maintained high evapotranspirative rates throughout the week, and in addition to meteorological indices such as SPI showing worsening conditions, groundwater and streamflow values continue to fall. Most of the Ohio Valley remained dry through the week.”
He also notes that only light rainfall is forecast for the Ohio Valley in the coming week, which, coupled with warmer temperatures, may further exacerbate conditions in areas that have been experiencing rapid drought onset.
The U.S. Drought Monitor is produced through a partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Reports released each Thursday cover the previous seven days through Tuesday morning.