Current Impacts
To see or report current drought impacts, please visit the Drought Impacts Toolkit, where you can find impacts from media in the Drought Impact Reporter and from citizen scientists and other volunteer observers under Condition Monitoring Observations.
Historic Impacts
No two states have the same experience during a drought. Below are examples of some of the impacts experienced in Minnesota in the past. The process for developing this example impact table is described in Noel, M., Bathke, D., Fuchs, B., Gutzmer, D., Haigh, T., Hayes, M., Poděbradská, M., Shield, C., Smith, K. and Svoboda, M., 2020. Linking drought impacts to drought severity at the state level. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 101(8), pp.E1312-E1321. doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0067.1. To view a more complete record, and to filter impacts by drought severity, sector and season, check out the interactive State Impacts Tool.
| Category | Examples of historically observed impacts |
|---|
| D0 | Fire danger increases |
| Lake and river levels decline; water temperatures rise |
| Soil moisture is low; pasture and row crops are stressed |
| Weather is good for construction projects |
| D1 | River and lake levels are lower than normal |
| Winter snow events are canceled |
| D2 | Bears search for food; trout runs are hampered; fish kills occur |
| Fire danger is high; burn permits are required |
| Ground is hard; seed corn is short; feed is expensive; crop yields are low |
| Landscaping is stressed; leaves change colors early |
| River flow is very low; snowpack is significantly lower; well levels decrease |
| D3 | Corn is harvested early; emergency haying and grazing are authorized |
| Surface waters are near record lows |
| Wildfires are widespread |