Drought challenges were well-documented last year, especially in the Upper Midwest. However, drought isn’t going away now that we’ve turned the calendar to 2018. DTN meteorologist Bryce Anderson says drought is also firing up and getting more intense in southern states.
Temps in the days ahead will be in the mid-70s in Oklahoma, with highs approaching 80 in the Texas Panhandle. Anderson says you don’t get temps like that without warm air over very dry ground, which only reinforces the dry conditions.
He says there really isn’t an end in sight, at least in the short term, as the drought is expanding to the west.
Most of the southern states where the drought is expanding just came out of long-term droughts in the last couple of years.
While the northern plains sweltered under a drought in 2017, they aren’t necessarily out of the woods completely.
The drought is also hitting southern livestock producers hard.
He says hay supplies are ten percent lower than last year, making the challenge of coping with the drought even harder on livestock producers in the south.
From the National Association of Farm Broadcasting News Service.