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 Wisconsin 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 |
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D0 | Burn bans are implemented |
Lakes and rivers are lower than normal |
Lawns are brown; landscape and gardens require more frequent watering |
Pasture and row crops are stressed |
D1 | Hay prices are high; people are selling horses |
D2 | Crop yields are down; pasture growth is sparse; livestock are removed from grazing |
Water use is high; groundwater pumping increases |
D3 | Agriculture economic losses are reported statewide |
Fairs have fewer entries |
Producers feed cattle supplemental hay |
Streamflow is reduced; water temperatures are warm; oxygen content is low; northern pike fish kill is reported |