By the first week of May 2026, drought had swallowed nearly two-thirds of the Lower 48 states. Ranchers in eastern Montana were selling cattle they could no longer afford to water. Reservoir levels along the Front Range of Colorado were dropping weeks ahead of schedule. And across the southern Plains, winter wheat fields that should have been knee-high sat stunted and brown, starved of moisture that never came.
The numbers behind the crisis are historic. From January through March, the contiguous United States received less precipitation than in any comparable period since modern record-keeping began in 1895, according to NOAA’s national climate summary. The previous record had stood since 1910. By late March, drought covered nearly 60% of the contiguous U.S. By the monitoring week of April 29 through May 5, the U.S. Drought Monitor placed 60.92% of the Lower 48 in moderate-to-exceptional drought categories (D1 through D4). Including Puerto Rico, just over half of all U.S. territory registered drought conditions.
Federal forecasters expect it to get worse before it gets better. NOAA’s seasonal drought outlook, covering through June 30, projects drought persisting and expanding across the West and parts of the Plains. The agency’s spring outlook points to three reinforcing problems: snowpack that came in well below normal across mountain ranges from the Cascades to the Rockies, soil moisture reserves that were largely depleted before planting season began, and an El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle that offers no near-term rescue. Thin snowpack means less meltwater feeding rivers and reservoirs this summer. Parched soils absorb what little rain does fall before it can reach crops or recharge aquifers. Each factor deepens the next.
A record that puts recent droughts in perspective
The United States has weathered severe droughts in recent memory. The 2012 drought blanketed 65% of the Lower 48 at its peak and caused more than $30 billion in agricultural losses, according to NOAA estimates. The 2020-2021 Western drought drove Lake Mead to its lowest level since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s. But neither of those episodes began with a precipitation deficit as deep as what 2026 has delivered in its opening months.
The Palmer Drought Severity Index for March 2026, published by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, registered among the most severe readings in the index’s full record dating to 1895. That index accounts for both precipitation shortfalls and temperature-driven moisture loss, meaning it captures not just how little rain fell but how aggressively heat pulled water out of the landscape. When spring arrived, much of the country was already running on empty.
The ENSO wildcard
The biggest variable shaping the rest of 2026 is what happens in the tropical Pacific. The Climate Prediction Center’s latest diagnostic discussion describes a transition from La Niña toward ENSO-neutral conditions, with forecasters watching for signs of a potential El Niño developing later in the year. Those are meaningfully different paths. A shift to neutral would leave the West and Plains largely at the mercy of existing dryness and short-term weather patterns. A developing El Niño could eventually steer more moisture toward the southern tier of the country, but that relief typically does not arrive until late fall or winter.
In practical terms, neither scenario promises significant drought relief before summer. A single well-placed storm system can temporarily ease conditions in one area, while a stalled high-pressure ridge can rapidly intensify drought in another. But forecast skill drops sharply beyond two weeks, so seasonal outlooks describe probable trajectories, not guarantees. Local outcomes may diverge from the national picture even as the broad signal remains one of widespread, worsening dryness.
What the data cannot yet tell us
Several critical questions remain unanswered as of early May 2026. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has not yet released updated crop-production forecasts or insurance-claims summaries reflecting this season’s conditions. Reports from farming regions describe crop stress, reduced pasture growth, and early livestock culling, but no official yield-impact estimates have been published. Until those numbers arrive, any dollar figures attached to the drought should be treated as preliminary.
The same applies to wildfire. Fire managers routinely warn that drought years can push risk earlier into the calendar, but comprehensive federal fire-acreage data for 2026 have not yet appeared in primary datasets from the National Interagency Fire Center. Whether this year ultimately rivals the worst fire seasons of recent decades will depend on lightning patterns, human ignitions, wind events, and suppression outcomes that have not yet played out. Wildfire season in the West typically does not peak until July and August.
Reservoir and streamflow conditions are tracked by the U.S. Geological Survey and regional water authorities, but a consolidated national assessment for the current drought has not been published. Some reservoirs are drawing down faster than normal; others still carry storage banked from wetter years. Communities across the West and Plains are already tightening water-use restrictions in anticipation of a dry summer, but the full scope of supply stress will not be clear until federal agencies synthesize the data later in the season.
What this means for the months ahead
The federal government’s own instruments confirm that the United States entered 2026 drier than at any point in more than a century of measurement. Its forecasters project that drought will expand, not retreat, through at least June. And the atmospheric pattern most likely to deliver widespread relief is months away at best.
For residents in drought-affected areas, particularly across the West and Plains, the practical steps are immediate: check local water-use restrictions now, monitor county-level fire advisories as temperatures climb, and plan for the possibility that conditions will tighten further before they ease. Ranchers and growers who depend on spring moisture are already operating in deficit, with no seasonal signal pointing to a rapid turnaround. The most reliable guideposts remain the observed precipitation shortfall and the official drought outlooks, and both point in the same direction: a long, dry summer with consequences still being tallied.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
