Drought — Phillips, Kansas

2025-05-27 to 2025-05-31 · Phillips, Kansas

Wider weather episode

Following a six-month respite (since mid-November 2024) with no worse than Moderate Drought (D1) assigned to any portion of this six-county North Central Kansas area by the U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), late-May 2025 technically saw the return of Severe Drought (D2) into far northwestern Phillips County, where recent and year-to-date precipitation deficits were most pronounced within the area. Fortunately, the May drought situation was not as severe elsewhere in North Central Kansas, with the bulk of the six counties assigned no worse than Abnormally Dry (D0). Taking a closer look at USDM drought category details within North Central Kansas during May, and as just mentioned, the vast majority of the area either maintained or even improved to D0 during the month...with approximately 77 percent of real estate (including all of Rooks/Phillips counties) assigned D0 at month's end. Meanwhile, roughly 21% of the domain (highest coverage in Jewell County) sported Moderate Drought (D1) at the end of May. The remainder of the six-county area...less than 2% of it...contained the aforementioned D2 that was introduced into far northwestern Phillips County on the May 27th USDM issuance.

Turning to May 2025 precipitation details, and leaning heavily on radar estimation along with observations from 27 NWS and CoCoRaHS observers, it was an overall-dry...but not truly notably-dry...month within North Central Kansas as a whole. Roughly 93% of the area saw at least slightly below normal precipitation (most places totaled between 2.00-3.80), but only around 11% of the area picked up less than half-normal (normal May precipitation being around 4.17 inches). Although ground-truth gauge measurements were few, Phillips County was clearly the overall-driest of the six counties, with official totals including: 1.36 in Phillipsburg, 1.90 six miles east of Phillipsburg and 2.43 at Kirwin Dam. In Phillipsburg, this marked the driest May in 11 years (since 0.67 in 2014). Broadening out the scope beyond May itself, year-to-date precipitation within North Central Kansas was a mixed bag. As of the end of May, most of the area stood somewhere between only slightly below normal and even slightly above normal for the year (overall-highest coverage of slightly above normal within parts of southern Osborne/Rooks/Mitchell counties). However, more pronounced year-to-date dryness was noted within especially Phillips/Smith counties. At Phillipsburg, the January-May total of only 4.88 was 3.77 below normal (56% of normal) and marked the lowest year-to-date total in 11 years (since 4.81 in 2014).

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1253224. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.