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• Midwest farmers have turned their attention to their winter wheat crop, with little cooperation from the weather as about two-thirds of those plantings have taken place in drought-affected areas.
• Kansas, the nation's top grower of the grain, isn't catching a break. Roughly 78 percent of the state is in extreme or exceptional drought, which is the same as the previous week.
• That grim standing comes as 88 percent of the nation's winter wheat crop has been planted, which is 3 percentage points ahead of the average over the previous five years. Sixty-three percent of the latest crop has emerged, down modestly from the pace of 67 percent during the past half-decade.
• Forty-one percent of the U.S. winter wheat plantings are considered good, and an identical amount is deemed fair. Thirty percent of the crop is classified as poor or very poor.
• Conditions of U.S. pastures and ranges appear to be on the upswing, with 40 percent of them labeled as poor or very poor -- a 14 percentage point upgrade from last week. The 56 percent of grazing areas deemed fair or good is up from 44 percent the previous week.
• With some rainfall expected in coming days from the southern Plains to the Great Lakes and the Northeast, climate watchers aren't anticipating meaningful precipitation that would appreciably relax the grip of drought that has put soil moisture and levels of rivers and reservoirs used for irrigation at such a deficit.
• Farmers embrace snowfall as a means of recharging soil moisture in time for each spring's corn and soybean sowings, with about 20 inches of snow equating to just an inch of actual water, said Brian Fuchs, a National Drought Mitigation Center climatologist. But in many areas, he said, this year's rainfall is 10 inches or more below normal -- a big hole to dig out of.
• "Winter is a fairly dry time of year for us anyway," he said. "In the drought world, you typically don't make up a lot of ground in the winter months."
• According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's latest seasonal outlook released Thursday, drought conditions are expected to persist from the Dakotas to Kansas and westward to California through January.
• "I don't see any large changes based on that in the next couple of months," said Mike Brewer, a National Climatic Data Center scientist who authored the latest Drought Monitor update. "It could get tight leading into the next growing season."
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