Drought in Southwest Oklahoma Dented But Not Dead After Days of Rain

• Logan Layden
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  Logan Layden is a reporter and managing editor for StateImpact Oklahoma. He is a native of McAlester, Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2009. Logan spent three years as a state capitol reporter and local host of All Things Considered for NPR member station KGOU in Norman and six years as a reporter with StateImpact from 2011 to 2017. Most recently, he was news director for McAlester Radio before returning to public radio in 2020.

U.S. DROUGHT MONITOR

The May 27th update of the U.S. Drought Monitor showing some improvement in southwest Oklahoma.

The latest update of the U.S. Drought Monitor shows some improvement in the hardest hit part of the state — southwest Oklahoma — after a very wet Memorial Day weekend.

Drovers CattleNetwork’s Angela Bowman looked at the impact recent rains have had across the southern plains, and found that while the last week helped, it won’t take long for drought to fully reassert itself, and it’s too late for the state’s wheat crop:

In nearby Oklahoma, conditions also improved with last week’s rain, falling from 61 percent in extreme or worse drought to 55 percent. Even so, the drought has already decimated Oklahoma’s wheat crop.

NewsChannel Four’s Aaron Bracket says Oklahoma has not seen a drought like this in decades.

Bracket said, “You know this drought really is exceptional. We’re talking something we haven’t seen, in not just years, but decades in parts of Southwestern [Oklahoma].”

StateImpact has reported on how “years of extreme drought has withered the agricultural economies of southern Great Plains states like Oklahoma, where farmers are bracing for one of the worst wheat crops in state history.”