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Kansas City, MO —
It just keeps getting worse.
The severe drought that has gripped the area and much of the Midwest this spring and summer continues to intensify, according to the latest report from the National Weather Service.
Not only is most of Missouri at the fourth step of the Weather Service’s five-step scale of drought severity, but a new area of step five – “exceptional drought” – has appeared right on the doorstep of Eastern Jackson County.
The math tells the story. In a normal year, Kansas City International Airport would have recorded 19.57 inches of rain from April 1 through Aug. 8. Instead, just one-third of that has fallen, 6.5 inches – the driest ever in 125 years of official records in Kansas City.
Unofficial readings at Lee’s Summit, the downtown airport and the two Olathe airports are only an inch or so closer to normal. KCI also got some of the worst of Wednesday night’s storms that were generally more loud than wet, but it got 0.46 inches – not reflected in the figures released Thursday – and rainfall totals varied widely across the metro area.
Two months ago, the Kansas City area was at the lowest rung of that five-step scale – officially just “extremely dry.” So was most of Missouri and much of the four-state area of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. By Independence Day, the metro area was at step three – “severe drought” – and the Missouri Bootheel and western Kansas had drifted into step four, “extreme drought.”
By the end of the month, those two areas had gone to step five – “exceptional drought” – and now another bubble-shaped area of “exceptional drought” has popped up, taking in part of the metro area. It picks up the southwest fringe of Jackson County, as well as substantially all of Cass and Bates counties and slivers of Henry, Johnson and Vernon counties – and then an even larger area to the west in Kansas. Roughly speaking, this is an area from Grandview to Harrisonville to Butler in Missouri and Spring Hill to Ottawa to Emporia in Kansas.
The drought’s effects are being felt nationwide and worldwide. The Plains states where the production of corn and soybeans is key are being hit harder by excessive drought conditions in the wake of the hottest month on record in the continental U.S., contributing to a surge in global food prices.
The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor map released Thursday showed that the amount of the contiguous U.S. mired in drought conditions dropped a little more than 1 percentage point, to 78.14 percent as of Tuesday. But the expanse still gripped by extreme or exceptional drought – the top two steps on the Weather Service scale – rose to 24.14 percent, up nearly 2 percentage points from the previous week.
Severe drought has sent corn prices soaring by almost 23 percent, and expectations of worsened crop prospects in Russia because of dry weather sent world wheat prices up 19 percent. The U.S. leads the world in exporting corn, soybeans and wheat, and the surging prices are expected to be felt across the international marketplace, hurting poor food-importing countries, said a study by British charity Oxfam.
It just keeps getting worse.
The severe drought that has gripped the area and much of the Midwest this spring and summer continues to intensify, according to the latest report from the National Weather Service.
Not only is most of Missouri at the fourth step of the Weather Service’s five-step scale of drought severity, but a new area of step five – “exceptional drought” – has appeared right on the doorstep of Eastern Jackson County.
The math tells the story. In a normal year, Kansas City International Airport would have recorded 19.57 inches of rain from April 1 through Aug. 8. Instead, just one-third of that has fallen, 6.5 inches – the driest ever in 125 years of official records in Kansas City.
Unofficial readings at Lee’s Summit, the downtown airport and the two Olathe airports are only an inch or so closer to normal. KCI also got some of the worst of Wednesday night’s storms that were generally more loud than wet, but it got 0.46 inches – not reflected in the figures released Thursday – and rainfall totals varied widely across the metro area.
Two months ago, the Kansas City area was at the lowest rung of that five-step scale – officially just “extremely dry.” So was most of Missouri and much of the four-state area of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska. By Independence Day, the metro area was at step three – “severe drought” – and the Missouri Bootheel and western Kansas had drifted into step four, “extreme drought.”
By the end of the month, those two areas had gone to step five – “exceptional drought” – and now another bubble-shaped area of “exceptional drought” has popped up, taking in part of the metro area. It picks up the southwest fringe of Jackson County, as well as substantially all of Cass and Bates counties and slivers of Henry, Johnson and Vernon counties – and then an even larger area to the west in Kansas. Roughly speaking, this is an area from Grandview to Harrisonville to Butler in Missouri and Spring Hill to Ottawa to Emporia in Kansas.
The drought’s effects are being felt nationwide and worldwide. The Plains states where the production of corn and soybeans is key are being hit harder by excessive drought conditions in the wake of the hottest month on record in the continental U.S., contributing to a surge in global food prices.
The weekly U.S. Drought Monitor map released Thursday showed that the amount of the contiguous U.S. mired in drought conditions dropped a little more than 1 percentage point, to 78.14 percent as of Tuesday. But the expanse still gripped by extreme or exceptional drought – the top two steps on the Weather Service scale – rose to 24.14 percent, up nearly 2 percentage points from the previous week.
Severe drought has sent corn prices soaring by almost 23 percent, and expectations of worsened crop prospects in Russia because of dry weather sent world wheat prices up 19 percent. The U.S. leads the world in exporting corn, soybeans and wheat, and the surging prices are expected to be felt across the international marketplace, hurting poor food-importing countries, said a study by British charity Oxfam.
