New Drought Conditions Report is a Catalog of Bad News

via droughtmonitor.unl.edu

The middle of the country looks like it has a bad sunburn.

The U.S. Drought Monitor released a new report today, and the news continues to worsen for Missouri, and the rest of the Midwest. Missouri has been a certified agricultural disaster area for weeks now -- how much worse can it get?

Well, in last week's report 68.8 percent of the state was categorized as experiencing D3 to D4 drought conditions, which translates as "Extreme Drought to Exceptional Drought" for the non-climatologist; D4 is the highest the chart goes. This week's report shows that 92.79 of the state is in the grip of the D3 to D4 ranking. The Bootheel region gets a straight D4, by the way.
How bad is that? Well, graphically it looks like this:

via droughtmonitor.unl.edu

The Midwestern region (Missouri, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky Illinois and Iowa) saw temperatures 5 to 10 degrees higher than normal for July, and the researchers note that in addition to all the damage Missouri has already experienced to corn crops and livestock pasture, "Recent concerns have now turned to soybeans and water supply as the drought's duration persists."

The weather for the next week looks -- oh, who am I kidding? It's gonna be hot and shitty for the next seven days. There's a 30 percent chance of rain tonight, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but it's also gonna be 101 degrees on Saturday. The lowest temperature in the next week is a projected 90. It's too late to save us. Those Mayans were right about 2012. Game over, man.