National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
United States Drought Monitor
Weekly operational drought classification for the United States on a five-category scale from abnormally dry to exceptional drought, produced by expert synthesis of precipitation, soil moisture, streamflow, groundwater and reservoir indicators.
Rights
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial reuse
- Not clearly stated
- Redistribution
- Yes
- Derivative use
- Yes
- Attribution required
- YesData from National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, used under CC BY 4.0.
- Terms last checked
- 23 August 2026
Access and coverage
- Publisher
- National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
- Geographic coverage
- United States
- Temporal coverage
- 2000 onwards
- Update frequency
- weekly
- Formats
- csv, geojson, shapefile, api
- Bulk download
- Available
- Registration required
- No
- Cost to Hydrionis
- Free
- Domains
- drought
Notes
The Drought Monitor is a convergence-of-evidence product combining several indicators with expert judgement. It is authoritative for US drought status but is not a single measured variable, and Hydrionis stores it as a classification rather than an observation.