As another wave of wildfires ignited Wednesday, western and central Nebraska property owners aren’t just praying for rain anymore – they’re preparing for how much worse this year could get.

The most recent findings released Thursday by the National Drought Mitigation Center show drought has increased in the last week across a wide stretch of western and central Nebraska – from Sioux to Boyd counties. More than half of the state, 56%, is now seeing extreme levels of drought, according to the newest measurements released Thursday.

Brief drops of rain the eastern portion of the state has seen over the last several weeks provided little relief. Improvements were only reported in a handful of counties in the very southeastern portion of Nebraska, primarily in Johnson, Nemaha and Otoe counties.

But the deteriorating land in the western two-thirds of Nebraska has already set the stage for a record wildfire year in the state’s history. Around 1 million acres have burned between the 600,000-acre Morrill Fire in western Nebraska that killed one person in Arthur County and the 129,000-acre Cottonwood Fire that burned a handful of structures, including houses.

The fires have stolen miles of pastureland needed to feed cattle this summer and uprooted entire cattle operations that were in the middle of calving season, subsequently affecting farming operations. And it’s leaving behind a trail of trauma for landowners who are constantly keeping watch of smoke over their pastures’ horizons.

Recent reports from the driest parts of the state in western Nebraska paint a picture of how dusty the land is getting. In a report filed with the National Drought Mitigation Center on April 18, a Sheridan County landowner who’s been on their property for more than 20 years said the last time they’ve seen their pastures this dry was in 2012, when 78% of the state was in exceptional drought – the worst classification on the Drought Monitor’s scale – and conditions dealt a catastrophic blow to ag producers. That was the same year the Sheridan County property owner’s private lake last dried out.

“Water levels were low last year but now completely dry,” the landowner reported to NDMC researchers on April 12, 2026. “In addition to being very dry (we have only observed 0.13 [inches of] moisture in the last 30 days here), we also are having an extremely windy spring. On top of that, it is very warm.”

Reports to NDMC turn more dire upstream in Wyoming. A report filed by a Platte County, Wyoming, property owner said they had never seen their land this dry and classified crop conditions there as “extremely poor.”

“Pastures provide very little or no feed,” the April 19 report said. “Supplemental feeding is required to maintain livestock condition. No field work has started as conditions are too dry. Limited planting of spring crops. Soil erosion from constant winds and dry conditions. Moisture from last week’s snow storm was not measurable.”

Similar dry impacts are being felt in Colorado – Nebraska’s other upstream neighbor – where record-low snowpack is leaving a dangerously low amount of water for the region. The Colorado Climate Center in early April recorded snowfall amounts that either tied or had the lowest measurements since recordkeeping began. The winters of 1976-77 and 1980-81 were previously the lowest.

It’s pushed several of Colorado’s metropolitan areas to implement mandatory water restrictions, including Denver, Aurora and Brighton. Colorado's capital has also instituted water price increases due to the exceptional drought conditions. Water customers will be billed an extra $1.10 per 1,000 gallons used.

Climatologists and meteorologists were hoping March and April would bring relief to the Rockies and provide some downstream momentum, but snowstorms didn’t leave much accumulation when they blew through – other than more worries as to what could develop in the coming months.

Most recent winter’s dry, hot conditions not even comparable to 2012

While recent months have exacerbated bone-dry conditions, central and western Nebraska’s drought has been building for the past five years. Between 2021 and 2022, conditions dried out severely enough to result in several devastating wildfires and cause widespread effects on the cattle industry. The 2022 drought, which caused many cattle operators to send their herds to feedlots and slaughterhouses early, left a large dent in the total U.S. cattle herd. And it’s still the primary reason beef prices continue to be so high.

But many landowners are comparing current conditions to the 2012 drought, when multiple states, especially Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas – the heart of cattle country – experienced month after month of deteriorating conditions between those summer and fall periods.

The deep drought followed a mild winter in 2011 and 2012, when snowpack was few and far between. It provided very little recharge of soil moisture throughout the Great Plains region and early green-up started the 2012 growing season earlier, according to a report on the 2012 drought from the National Drought Mitigation Center and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Blistering summer heat in 2012 set the stage for some of the worst weather the states had seen in recent history. Much of western and central Nebraska, the traditionally drier parts of the state, saw more than 20 – and in some places more than 30 – days of temps higher than 100 degrees.

But a major difference between 2012 and the start of 2026 is the differences in winter moisture that precedes summer months, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln agricultural meteorologist Eric Hunt.

His biggest concern is how far behind the western and central parts of the state are when it comes to water traveling in from Wyoming and Colorado. Not only is the snow-water equivalent in the North Platte Basin well below the historic minimum, it’s about 15 inches below normal.

“So we are running about at least a month – maybe as much as two months ahead of schedule in terms of where we are for melting and runoff going into the river,” Hunt said. “There was a winter of ‘77 and ‘80-’81 that were pretty bad for snowfall and a lot of the West, but there really is no historic precedent for the rapid melt off the snow that we had in the middle or later portion of March this year.”

The National Weather Service confirmed in early March that Nebraska recorded its third-warmest winter since the Dust Bowl years in the 1930s. But when looking at both temperature and moisture, the 2025-26 winter is starkly worse, Hunt said.

“If you take a look at the previous four months – if you take a quadchart of temperature and precipitation – it would basically show you that the four-month period was simultaneously the warmest and driest on record,” Hunt said. “If you look at that quadchart, there’s nothing that’s even remotely close to it. It is off on its own little outlier island in terms of just how warm and dry it was. Even years like 2012, 2022 and 2002 were not nearly that exceptional for either warmth or for how dry it was.”

Hunt said while 2012 might be the most recent comparable dry year, the drought didn't nosedive until the summer when it seemed like the tap just turned off.

“At this point in 2012, we really were not dealing with massive drought in the state,” Hunt said. “Things were dry in spots, but we had better moisture that winter than we’ve had so far this winter.”

According to weather data, March 2012 was the warmest March on record and was even warmer than March 2026. But that warmth experienced more than a decade ago wasn’t similar to the warm March Nebraska just saw.

“March 2012 was the warmest on record, but we didn’t necessarily see temperatures in the upper 90s in March 2012,” Hunt said. “In addition to just having well-above average highs, we had a very different upper air pattern in March of 2012 that led to just very predominant southerly flow, which meant we were getting a lot more humidity brought up here. The air mass [in 2012] wasn’t nearly as dry as it was this March.”

Much of western and central Nebraska didn’t record much, or any, snowfall this winter. Because the ground wasn’t frozen for long, it was often exposed to wind and sun. That means that the year started with the dual threat of low snowcover and less moisture in the ground.

“We now are facing a situation where moisture has to come really soon here for some places in the state, or it’s going to be very bad news for agriculture,” Hunt said.

Water managers already limiting farming irrigation

Surface-water suppliers in western and central Nebraska are heeding those concerns. The Platte River Basin, which runs across the southern half of the Panhandle and along the length of the Platte River, is facing the most immediate pressure, but other water watchers in the state have their own growing concerns.

Craig Shaffer is the manager of the Lisco Irrigation District in the heart of the Platte River Basin, and he’s warning his irrigators that this year will be tough for water supply.

“This year, it could certainly be a problem, because I don’t believe there’s going to be much water late into the spring – not so much in late-summer,” he said. “We cautioned all of our producers on the irrigation district that there’s just not an abundance of water that we can even put in the ditch, nevermind promise them for further down the road.”

Shaffer said at their annual meeting in February, they started ringing alarm bells. But the irrigation district, which relies on levies it charges to its ag producers, is fairly small and Shaffer said they probably wouldn’t have the funding needed to purchase stored water. That’s a difficult situation to face, Shaffer said, since it “might be the difference between them being able to put a crop in the ground and watch it come up and burn or just not putting one in.”

As the surface water lowers across western Nebraska’s lakes and reservoirs, another issue that arises is not drawing from it so areas that have water rights downstream can receive their allotments. The Lisco Irrigation District watches what the North Platte River flow is near Lewellen.

“And when it drops to 200 feet, there’s water rights below McConaughey that precede ours,” Shaffer said. “I think ours goes back to 1893, which seems like it should be quite early, but there’s some further east that are ahead of us. Once they start allocating it or regulating it below 200 feet at Lewellen, then it certainly begins to affect us.”

The Pathfinder Irrigation District in Mitchell reported to University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s CropWatch that it's navigating one of its tightest seasons in memory. In late March, district leaders reported only about 25 days of available water in its reservoirs, and with uncertainty in mountain runoff, the district is preparing for a reduced allocation of 0.90 feet per 80 acres. That’s down from the normal 1.0 foot allocation. It’s a similar situation in nearby Goshen Irrigation District and Gering-Fort Laramie Irrigation District, which reported about 38 to 41 days of water supply, including 17 days carried over from 2025.

In the Republican River Basin, water managers have to keep in mind the moisture shortfalls, as well as legal obligations under the Republican River Compact with Kansas and Colorado. The Frenchman-Cambridge Irrigation District has already implemented a mandatory 35-day bypass of reservoir inflows earlier this year to meet interstate obligations. Subsequently, the district has decided to keep one of its canals entirely shut down this year and severely limit operations on another canal.

Several ag producers are hoping a turn from the LaNiña pattern to an El Niño could bring some summer rainfall, and while Hunt said the changing weather patterns could bring a shot of more moisture, it’s not a sure bet.

“In the second or third year of a stronger La Niña and [as] we’re going into an El Niño, there is a decent signal that we are going to start getting some better moisture into the region,” he said. “If we do get some moisture and we do turn down the temperatures a little while, that would actually be the best thing on Earth for the pastures. It would also be very beneficial for the wheat.”

The winter crop isn’t looking great for western Nebraska farmers so far. According to the most recent crops report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, winter wheat was rated 18% in very poor condition, 29% poor, 39% fair, 14% good and 0% excellent.

That could foreshadow the farming yields to come later this year.

“If it doesn’t really rain out there for the next three, four weeks, and you plant out there in mid-May, I don’t know that anything would actually germinate without putting water in it,” Hunt said.

https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/news/news-articles/nothing-remotely-close-to-it-nebraska-grappling-with-warmest-driest-drought-on-record/