About one-third of Arkansas was in exceptional drought, the most intense category of drought, in the week that ended Tuesday, up from 10 percent the previous week, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported Thursday.
The portion of the state most affected includes much of the state’s center.
More than 80 percent of the pasture and range land in the state was in poor or very poor condition, the Drought Monitor also said.
Most of the state received less than 1/10 inch of rain in the week that ended Wednesday, the Southern Regional Climate Center reported on its website Thursday.
Moderate to severe drought expanded to 64 percent of the lower 48 U.S. states in the past week, up slightly from the prior week, the report said.
Eighty percent of the lower 48 is affected by abnormal dryness or worse, down slightly from the previous week because of heavy rain in parts of the South, said the monitor, based in Lincoln, Neb. In addition to Arkansas, drought conditions worsened in Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.
Information for this article was contributed by Brian K. Sullivan of Bloomberg News.
Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
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