Drought — Sherman, Nebraska

2025-03-01 to 2025-03-31 · Sherman, Nebraska

Wider weather episode

March 2025 marked the fourth consecutive month with below normal precipitation across the bulk of South Central Nebraska, although a significant mid-month blizzard brought a much-needed shot in the arm of generally one-half inch to one inch of liquid-equivalent to many areas (via melted snow). This temporarily eased the drought situation for much of the 24-county domain, but only for what ended up being a fairly short time (into mid-April). Nonetheless, a little over one-third of the area remained in Moderate Drought (D1) at month's end (per the U.S. Drought Monitor/USDM), and March marked the eighth-straight month with Severe Drought (D2) still plaguing a small part of the area. Breaking down county-level USDM drought category specifics during March in more detail, the month began with the vast majority of South Central Nebraska (around 83 percent of it) assigned D1, including all counties along/east of Highway 281. Meanwhile, portions of some southwestern counties were assigned Abnormally Dry/D0 (comprising roughly 15% of the domain) and the final 2% of the area consisted of small slivers of D2 within Dawson, Sherman and Valley counties. Over the course of the month, the only significant alteration occurred in the immediate aftermath of the aforementioned blizzard, as a sizable chunk of real estate (mainly south/southeast of a Kearney-Genoa line) improved from D1 to D0. As a result, the categorical breakdown at month's end stood as follows: 1) D2 still only included around 2 percent of the area (those same small portions of Dawson/Sherman/Valley counties)...2) The areal coverage of D1 decreased markedly in response to the aforementioned one-category improvement...now making up around 35% of South Central Nebraska...3) D0 encompassed the remaining 63% of the domain.

Turning to March 2025 precipitation details, and leaning heavily on observations from around 110 NWS and NeRAIN/CoCoRaHS observers, around 85% of South Central Nebraska picked up at least slightly below normal precipitation (normal March precipitation across most of the area ranges 1.25-1.65). The majority of observations (the middle 80% of them) generally ranged from 0.60-1.50, with the overall-highest amounts focused within counties along/north of Interstate 80, and the overall-lowest tallies largely favoring the southern-most row of counties along the Kansas border. A few of the overall-lowest March totals included: 0.41 eight miles south of Elwood, 0.56 in Edison and Gothenburg, and 0.59 in Beaver City. Meanwhile, some of the highest March amounts (albeit only near-to-modestly-above normal) featured: 2.13 at Belgrade, 1.83 near York, 1.67 near Gresham and 1.64 in Polk.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1241228. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.