Despite the recent winter weather, most of the area is still dealing with drought conditions that, on a scale of 1-5, are getting into the 4-5 range. The U.S. Drought Monitor released their weekly maps Thursday and the recent snow and sleet has not helped.
Across northern Arkansas, the map shows a large part of Izard County is in the exceptional drought category, the highest category there is.
All of Stone and Searcy counties, most of Baxter and Fulton counties and the southeastern half of Marion County are shown in the extreme drought category, the fourth highest category.
The extreme northeastern corner of Fulton County, far northern Baxter County, the northeastern half of Marion County, all of Boone County and the northeastern two thirds of Newton County are shown to be in the severe drought category, the third highest of the five categories.
The southwestern third of Newton County is in the next to lowest category, which is moderate drought.
In southern Missouri, the extreme southeastern corner of Howell County is in the extreme drought category.
Virtually all of Ozark and Taney counties along with southeastern two thirds of Howell County and the northwestern corner of Douglas County are shown in the severe drought category.
The northwestern corner of Howell County and the rest of Douglas County are in the moderate drought category.
In the period from October through January at the KTLO, Classic Hits and The Boot studios, the official reporting station for the National Weather Service in Mountain Home, only 6.52 inches of rainfall has been recorded. Normal rainfall for that four month period is 15.86 inches meaning we were 9.34 inches below normal for the period and only received 41% of the normal rainfall.
The U.S. Monthly Drought Outlook, which was issued Saturday and is valid for the month of February, is not promising. It shows the drought tendency for the month with all of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri in an area where the drought is expected to persist.
The next chance of rain for the area is not until the middle of next week, but overall, the National Weather Service says the outlook for breaking the drought is not favorable during the month of February.
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