The first U.S. Drought Monitor of December showed improvement from just two weeks prior and from mid-October, USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey says. For the U.S. Drought Monitor for the period ending Dec. 2:
“We are seeing about 41.4% of the country still in drought. We are seeing drought coverage down approximately five percentage points. We were greater than 46% both on Oct. 21 and Nov. 18.”
Rippey acknowledges the 41% drought coverage remains a formidable number.
“We have seen U.S. drought coverage greater than 40% each week since mid-September of 2025, so it certainly has been an autumn where we have been dealing with considerable drought on the landscape.”
Yet precipitation in recent weeks has chipped away at the drought number over the fall. What does this mean for crops and commodities at this time of year in drought coverage? Rippey starts with winter wheat. Now at the dormancy stage in several parts of the country:
“Currently, we’re seeing just about 35% of the U.S. winter wheat production area in drought. That is actually down 10 percentage points from an autumn peak of 45%, so we have seen improvement in the right direction. A lot of that is due to beneficial precipitation that has fallen across the lower Midwest and the Northwest, and to a lesser degree, some of the rain that has recently fallen across the southern Plains.”
Adversely, “65% of the winter wheat production area is not in drought, and that does include a lot of the key, heavily cropped areas across the central Great Plains, including much of top producer Kansas.”
As for drought coverage for hay and cattle, as of Dec. 2:
“Thirty percent of the U.S. hay production area currently in drought, down from a peak just two weeks ago, 37%, and U.S. cattle inventory and drought, just one-quarter of the U.S. cattle currently experiencing drought. That is down from 33% two weeks ago.”
The corn and soybean growing season is long past. But what about growing areas going into the winter season?
“We are going in 30% of both the corn and soybean production areas in drought. That is down from peaks a few weeks ago: 32% for corn, 39% for soybeans. Remember, we did have that late-developing drought that did have some impact in some of the later-developing crop areas.”