Drought now reaches 42 states and 111.6 million people after another week of spread

Drought now covers 49.78 percent of the United States and Puerto Rico, and the latest U.S. Drought Monitor release puts 42 states at moderate drought (D1) or worse. The same release counts 111.6 million people in the United States, 109.0 million of them in the lower 48, living in areas under drought.

Both figures belong to the map valid at 8 a.m. EDT on September 29, 2026, which the Monitor issued on Thursday, October 1. The Monitor is reissued every Thursday, so these numbers stay current only until the next map replaces them.

October 1 release by the numbers

The National Integrated Drought Information System’s current-conditions page breaks the release into a handful of measures. The population in drought rose 5.7 percent from the previous week, while the land area in drought grew only 0.3 percent, to 59.38 percent of the lower 48. The count of states at D1 or worse did not change from the week before, which means the spread in this release was a deepening and a shift in where the dryness sits rather than a new state tipping into drought. Over a month, drought area is up 0.5 percent and the affected population is up 8.2 percent, even though one fewer state is at D1 or worse than a month earlier.

The Monitor’s own current map page carries the validity and release stamps, and the weekly text summary is written by Jonathan Case of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the University of Alabama in Huntsville and Denise Gutzmer of the National Drought Mitigation Center. Their narrative opens by calling it “a dynamic and changeable drought environment across the country,” driven partly by the rapidly intensifying El Niño.

Southern Plains to Southeast hot spots

The 42 states are not listed individually on the pages that carry the 42-state count, so the clearest breakdown is the Monitor’s regional summary. According to the weekly narrative, drought worsened again in Texas and Oklahoma, the Lower Midwest, the Lower Mississippi River valley and the Southeast. Rapid intensification struck Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia after what Case and Gutzmer describe as “persistently hot weather with virtually no rainfall during much of August and September.”

Most of central and eastern Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas now sit in severe, extreme or exceptional drought. Alabama and Georgia were mostly dry and picked up newly added severe and extreme categories, and Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee deteriorated rapidly into the severe-to-extreme range. Away from the South, northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula also worsened. The summary says northern Wisconsin would need nearly 15 inches of rain over three months to fully recover. Maine remained largely drought-stricken, and the U.S. Virgin Islands stayed in exceptional-to-extreme drought.

Texas as the sharpest gauge

Texas, which the Monitor’s narrative places at the center of the southern deterioration, shows the scale most plainly. The drought.gov Texas page reports 91.9 percent of the state in drought as of the September 29 map, split into 24.1 percent in moderate drought, 41.3 percent in severe, 22.8 percent in extreme and 3.6 percent in exceptional drought. About 23.5 million Texans live in drought-affected areas, a 29.1 percent increase over the previous week.

Not every region lost ground. Hurricanes Odalys and Polo delivered 5 to 10 inches of rain across parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado, and the narrative ties the tropical activity to a Pacific warmed by El Niño. A Nor’easter brought beneficial coastal rain from Delaware to Massachusetts, though groundwater concerns kept moderate drought in many coastal areas. Virginia and North Carolina improved after early-week rain, and the High Plains generally benefited from rainfall across Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska. That split is how a single release can show drought-busting gains in the Desert Southwest and a larger affected population at the same time: the population measure rose 5.7 percent while the area measure moved 0.3 percent, and the two figures are tallied separately on the same page.

Tally at D1 or worse

Each weekly map assigns every part of the country a category from D0 (abnormally dry) to D4 (exceptional drought), and drought.gov states the count as 42 U.S. states “experiencing Moderate Drought (D1) or worse.” Researchers and agencies who want the state-by-state percentages behind that tally can pull them from the Monitor’s data services.

The next release, due on a Thursday, will show whether the 42-state count holds. The unresolved piece is the South: the October 1 narrative describes Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas as already deep in the severe-to-exceptional categories, with northern Wisconsin in exceptional drought as well.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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