BurnDates

Drought by state

Drought monitor by state

50% of the lower 48 is in drought this week. The driest states we watch are Colorado (93%) , Oklahoma (93%) and Minnesota (75%) .

From the U.S. Drought Monitor map for . A new one comes out every Thursday morning.

Every state we watch

State In drought Worst class Last four weeks
Colorado burn bans Exceptional drought little change
Oklahoma burn bans Exceptional drought spread 50 points
Minnesota Severe drought spread 37 points
Washington burn bans Extreme drought little change
Arkansas burn bans Exceptional drought spread 8 points
Kansas Severe drought spread 5 points
New Jersey Extreme drought eased 45 points
Texas burn bans Exceptional drought little change
Iowa Severe drought spread 13 points
Massachusetts Severe drought eased 68 points
New Hampshire Moderate drought eased 7 points
Pennsylvania Severe drought eased 8 points
Missouri burn bans Severe drought little change
Tennessee burn bans Severe drought eased 20 points
Illinois Moderate drought little change
Alabama Abnormally dry little change
Connecticut Abnormally dry eased 71 points

Clear on this week's map: Alabama, Connecticut.

Why drought sits on a burn ban site

Burn bans follow dry ground. A county commission watches how dry the brush and the soil are, and the Drought Monitor map is the clearest weekly read on that anywhere — which is why the first question after "is my county under a ban?" is usually "how dry is it out there?"

We read the Monitor's state and county figures every week and show them here in plain numbers. Burn bans by county start here, and stage 1 and stage 2 restrictions are the public-land version of the same idea.

A dry map is not a burn ban. Rules change fast in dry weather — confirm with your county fire marshal or burn line before you light.

The map comes from the U.S. Drought Monitor, put together each week by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with NOAA and the USDA. Not every state has a page here yet — we start with the states where the drought question and the burn ban question are asked together. States on the list: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington.