US Drought Statistics 2026 | Severity, States & Key Facts

Drought in America 2026

As of today, the United States is in the grip of one of the most widespread and multi-layered drought crises the country has faced in decades. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor — the joint federal product published by the National Drought Mitigation Center, USDA, NOAA, and NASA — 50.18% of the United States and Puerto Rico and a staggering 60.05% of the Lower 48 states are currently under drought conditions. That means more than half the country is experiencing measurable water deficits right now, spanning the Southeast, Southern Plains, West, and large portions of the Intermountain region. The Southeast has just recorded its largest area of severe-or-worse drought since the U.S. Drought Monitor began in 2000, with Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina seeing record dry conditions for the September 2025 through March 2026 period — records that stretch all the way back to 1895. At the same time, the Southern Plains is suffering through its sixth consecutive year of drought, and the western snowpack on which the entire region depends for spring and summer water entered 2026 at one of the lowest levels recorded in the 40-year SNOTEL station history.

What separates the US drought of 2026 from previous bad years is the geographic scale and the layering of crises it has triggered simultaneously. NOAA’s March 20, 2026 Spring Outlook warned that drought conditions are forecast to worsen or develop further across the West and south-central Plains through at least June, while the Colorado River Basin’s snowpack melted off at a record pace — the Colorado River Basin recorded its warmest March on record, at 13.7°F above normal, causing peak snowmelt to arrive an average of 21 to 34 days earlier than normal across western states. In the Southern Plains, 89% of Texas and 99% of Oklahoma were in drought as of March 31. More than 1.6 million acres had already burned in wildfires by early April 2026 — more than double the 10-year average — fueled directly by drought-dried vegetation. The US drought statistics for 2026 tell a story of a country at a serious water inflection point, where the compounding effects of a sixth-year southern drought, record-low western snowpack, and a historically severe southeastern drought event are all happening at exactly the same time.

Key US Drought Facts in 2026 — At a Glance

Sources: U.S. Drought Monitor / Drought.gov, April 6 and April 16, 2026 (drought.gov); NOAA Spring Outlook, March 20, 2026 (noaa.gov); Drought.gov Southern Plains Update, April 2, 2026; Drought.gov Southeast Update, April 16, 2026; Drought.gov Snow Drought Update, April 9, 2026; USDA NASS Winter Wheat Crop Progress, April 6, 2026; USDA Agriculture in Drought PDF, April 7, 2026 (usda.gov)

The headline numbers from the April 2026 U.S. Drought Monitor are striking enough on their own — 60%+ of the contiguous United States in drought is an extraordinary figure for mid-April, a season when spring rains would normally be starting to replenish soil moisture across much of the country. But the deeper story is in the severity distribution. It is not just that drought is widespread — it is that a massive portion of the drought area is at Severe (D2) or worse intensity, meaning real, concrete impacts on water supplies, agriculture, and fire risk are already unfolding, not just forecast. The Southeast’s 96.83% drought coverage as of April 16, 2026 is a regional record since monitoring began in the year 2000. Meanwhile, the 95% of US cotton currently located in drought-affected areas and the collapse of winter wheat conditions from 48% good-to-excellent last year to just 35% now are direct early-season signals that the 2026 US drought’s economic consequences for agriculture are already being locked in, with months of the growing season still ahead.

Current US Drought Severity by Category in 2026

The U.S. Drought Monitor uses five classifications. The table below shows the national picture based on the most recent data available as of April 2026.

Sources: U.S. Drought Monitor, National Drought Status — Drought.gov, April 6, 2026; National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), April 2026 (drought.gov/national)

Understanding what these drought categories actually mean on the ground matters as much as the percentages. A location in D2 (Severe Drought) is not merely “dry” — it is experiencing measurable impacts including crop and pasture losses, declining stream and reservoir levels, and elevated wildfire risk requiring active management. A location in D3 (Extreme Drought) is dealing with major water shortages, widespread pasture failure, and fire conditions that require state or federal emergency responses. By April 2026, 40 or more US states and territories are experiencing at least Severe Drought (D2) in some portion of their land area — a level of geographic spread that puts pressure on federal disaster programs, crop insurance systems, wildfire suppression resources, and municipal water authorities all at the same time. The fact that regions as geographically diverse as the Pacific Northwest, the Southern Plains, the Southeast, and the Intermountain West are all simultaneously in significant drought means there is no regional buffer left — states that might normally export water resources or agricultural product to drought-stricken neighbors are themselves stretched thin.

Southeast US Drought Statistics 2026 — Record-Breaking Severity

The Southeast entered 2026 in the midst of what federal drought authorities are calling a historically exceptional drought event.

Sources: Drought.gov Southeast Drought Status Update, April 16, 2026 (drought.gov); USDA/NOAA Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin, April 2026; Agrolatam.com USDA report, April 16, 2026

The scale and depth of the Southeast drought in 2026 is genuinely unprecedented in the modern record. Three states — Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina — are experiencing their driest September-through-March period since 1895, when systematic climate records began in the region. That is not just a bad year — it is the worst such period in 130+ years of recorded history. The human and agricultural consequences are already cascading across the region. Drought.gov’s April 16 update documented conditions where soil moisture is limited or non-existent across the region, seeds cannot germinate or soil is too dry to plant at all, stock ponds that provide water for livestock have run nearly dry, and farmers have been feeding hay to livestock since fall 2025 — an extraordinary early-start supplemental feeding season that is burning through reserves and driving up costs heading into spring. With the next 7-day forecast showing limited to no rainfall for most of the region and temperatures forecast above normal, there is no immediate relief on the horizon for a drought that has been building for nine months without meaningful break.

Southern Plains Drought Statistics in the US 2026

Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas are in the sixth consecutive year of a drought that has become one of the most economically damaging in the region’s recorded history.

Sources: Drought.gov Southern Plains Update, April 2, 2026 and February 26, 2026 (drought.gov); Drought.gov Southern Plains Update, January 22, 2026; The Conversation, February 9, 2026 (theconversation.com); Texas A&M AgriLife Today, January 28, 2026 (agrilifetoday.tamu.edu)

The six-year drought across Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas is not a weather anomaly anymore — it is a structural regional crisis. Researchers at UC Merced, the Southern Regional Climate Center, and NIDIS found three key drivers sustaining this drought: rising temperatures amplified by a La Niña climate pattern, chronic water supply shortages, and lingering economic damage from the previous drought that left farms, ranches, and water systems with no recovery buffer before the next cycle hit. The $23.6 billion in agricultural losses across just Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas from 2020 through 2024 alone — before 2025 and 2026 losses are even tallied — represents generational damage to the ranching and farming communities of the Southern Plains. The reservoir numbers alone tell a grim water-supply story: Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon below 9% capacity is the worst on record for those critical South Texas water sources, while the Rio Grande’s major reservoirs sit at 12–31% of capacity — levels that restrict water allocations for both agricultural irrigation and municipal use across a densely populated transboundary river basin.

Western US Snow Drought & Water Supply Statistics 2026

The western United States is experiencing a snow drought — critically low snowpack — that is compounding the drought crisis across the Colorado River Basin and Pacific Northwest.

Sources: Drought.gov Snow Drought Update, April 9, 2026 (drought.gov); Drought.gov Snow Drought Update, January 8, 2026; NOAA Spring Outlook, March 20, 2026 (noaa.gov); Drought.gov Intermountain West Update, January 15, 2026; Western Water / Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, March 10, 2026 (western-water.com)

The western snow drought of 2026 is not just a local water story — it is an economic and infrastructure story for the entire American West. Mountain snowpack functions as a natural reservoir for western communities: snow accumulates in winter and melts slowly through spring and early summer, feeding rivers, reservoirs, farms, and cities. When snowpack is critically low — as it is across the Colorado River Basin, Rio Grande Basin, Pacific Northwest, and Sierra Nevada simultaneously in 2026 — the entire water delivery system for tens of millions of Americans becomes stressed before summer even begins. The April 9, 2026 Drought.gov Snow Drought report documented that the record-shattering heat wave of March 2026 combined with already historically low snowpack caused peak snowmelt to arrive 21 to 34 days ahead of schedule across the West. That early melt means rivers will run higher and faster in April and May, then drop sharply in June, July, and August — exactly when agricultural water demand peaks and municipal water systems are most stressed. With no substantial relief expected through the summer and the Climate Prediction Center showing increased chances of continued warmth and dryness across the West, the 2026 irrigation season is shaping up as one of the most constrained in recent memory.

US Drought Impact on Agriculture in 2026

Drought is already measurably damaging the 2026 US crop year, with conditions reflected in USDA’s most recent crop progress and agriculture-in-drought tracking.

Sources: USDA Agriculture in Drought, April 7, 2026 (usda.gov); USDA NASS Winter Wheat Progress Report, April 6, 2026; Drought.gov Southeast Update, April 16, 2026; Agrolatam USDA/NOAA report, April 16, 2026 (agrolatam.com); The Conversation, February 9, 2026

The USDA’s Agriculture in Drought tracker as of April 7, 2026, shows that drought is already deeply embedded in the 2026 growing season before most summer crops have even been planted. The worst single number in the table is 97% of US peanuts in moderate-or-worse drought — virtually the entire national peanut crop is under stress right now. 95% of US cotton is similarly drought-exposed, with South Texas farmers having already ceased operations entirely in some areas due to the combination of drought damage and low commodity prices. For winter wheat — a bellwether crop whose condition is set months before harvest — the drop from 48% good-to-excellent last year to just 35% this year, combined with the rise in poor-to-very-poor ratings from 21% to 31%, signals a potentially significant shortfall in the 2026 wheat harvest that commodity markets are already pricing in. The 1.6 million acres of wildfire damage by early April — more than double the 10-year average — adds a further layer of agricultural loss beyond the direct crop-stress numbers, destroying grazing land, fencing, hay reserves, and livestock infrastructure that ranchers and farmers depend on for years, not just one season.

US Drought Forecast Outlook for Spring–Summer 2026

NOAA’s March 20, 2026 Spring Outlook provides the authoritative government forecast for drought conditions through June 2026.

Sources: NOAA Spring Outlook, March 20, 2026 (noaa.gov); Drought.gov Southeast Update, April 16, 2026; Drought.gov Snow Drought Update, April 9, 2026; Drought.gov Southern Plains Update, April 2, 2026; NOAA Climate Prediction Center

NOAA’s March 20, 2026 Spring Outlook from the Climate Prediction Center is unambiguous about the trajectory for the nation’s most drought-stricken regions: the West and the South are not getting better any time soon. The transition from La Niña to ENSO-neutral conditions — which NOAA describes as a shift where neither El Niño nor La Niña is dominant — introduces some forecast uncertainty, but the momentum of existing drought, depleted soil moisture, and critically low snowpack and reservoir levels means that even near-normal precipitation would take months to translate into meaningful drought relief. NOAA NWS Director Ken Graham specifically cited three factors shaping this spring’s outlook: ENSO conditions, low snowpack in the West, and soil moisture content throughout the lower 48 — all three of which are currently unfavorable across the most drought-affected regions. For the Southeast, a brief window of potential relief is appearing in the April 21–27 forecast, which slightly favors above-normal precipitation for much of the region — but forecasters are quick to note that potential evaporative demand is forecast to be extremely high for this time of year, meaning even above-average rain would be partly offset by the atmosphere’s intense drying capacity under above-normal temperatures.

2025 Drought in Review — Setting the Stage for 2026

Understanding the current drought requires looking at what 2025 set in motion, as documented in Drought.gov’s January 15, 2026 retrospective.

Sources: Drought.gov “Drought in 2025 in 14 Graphics,” January 15, 2026 (drought.gov); The Conversation, February 9, 2026 (theconversation.com)

The Drought.gov retrospective published on January 15, 2026 described 2025 as a year where drought proved to be “even more devastating when compounded with other climate hazards, such as wildfire and flood.” That framing matters for understanding 2026: the country did not enter this year from a position of recovery. The national drought peak of late November 2025, when 36.65% of the US was in drought, provided the foundation on which the explosive early-2026 expansion was built. By mid-March 2026 — barely three and a half months later — that figure had grown to 55% of the continental United States, and by early April it reached 60% of the Lower 48. The speed and scale of that expansion — from 36% to 60% in roughly four months — reflects both pre-existing moisture deficits and a winter pattern that was warmer and drier than normal across the Great Plains, Lower Mississippi Valley, and Southeast simultaneously. The unusual return of two separate La Niña events in 2025 disrupted what would normally be a more balanced precipitation distribution across the country, and the downstream effects of that climate pattern are still being felt in soil moisture deficits and streamflow anomalies entering the 2026 growing season.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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