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Data, Maps & Tools

How to find your way through this section:

  • By topic: Click on a topic on the grid below to find maps, data and links to information about that category. Some links may appear in more than one topic, such as soil moisture, vegetation and agriculture. 
  • By interactivity: The “Tools” page links to interactive sites where you can customize information to meet your needs. The tools allow you to customize information by designating locations; date ranges; comparisons among events and conditions; and more. Many of these applications will create charts or maps specific to the situation you design. Interactive tools also appear under specific topics.

The majority of the links show the continental U.S. For North American and Global data, go to the North American Drought Portal or the Global Drought Portal.

Current Conditions
dry cracked earth
Areas of drought, precipitation/temperature averages and totals, more.
Outlooks & Forecasts
map of precipitation forecast
What’s being predicted, for various timescales.
Impacts
man standing in field of dried up corn crop
How drought is affecting agriculture, water supplies, wildfires and other sectors.
Soil Moisture
furrows of dirt in an agricultural field
Groundwater and surface water monitoring, crop moisture maps, more.
Vegetation
plants
Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI), greenness data, impacts.
Fire
Fire engulfing trees
Keetch-Byram Drought Index, National Interagency Fire Center data, GEOMAC.
Temperature & Precipitation
rain hitting the ground
Amounts, anomalies, forecasts for precipitation and temperature.
Agriculture
rows of healthy crops
Weather and crop bulletins; agricultural impacts; crop areas in drought.
Water Supply
reservoir edge
Stream flows, surface water measurements, snowpack data, evaporative stress indices.
Paleoclimate
cross-section of tree trunk showing tree rings
The science of past droughts; reconstructions of drought from the past 1200 years; more.
Data
images of charts and maps
Filter and search databases by category, location, update frequency and more.
Software
coding on a screen
This is the official software repository for National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS).
Tools
hand clicking a mouse
Map and Data Viewer and other sites where you can download and customize data.