WASHINGTON - Lingering snow and colder-than-normal temperatures in much of the United States will give way to warmer-than-average weather and continued drought in areas that need moisture most, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday in its spring outlook.

Fifty-one percent of the continental United States is already in moderate to exceptional drought and that is expected to continue in California, the Southwest, the southern Rocky Mountain states, Texas and Florida, NOAA said.

The Midwest, the northern and central Great Plains, Georgia, the Carolinas and northern Alaska may see some relief from drought during April, May and June.

That could be an improvement over 2012, when two-thirds of the country experienced drought conditions and the vast majority of the United States saw record-high temperatures.

---

The next three months will also bring significant flood risk to North Dakota and northern Minnesota, with moderate flooding possible in the upper Mississippi River basin, including parts of Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri, said Laura Furgione of NOAA's National Weather Service.

Minor flooding is possible for the lower Mississippi River basin and in the Southeast, including parts of Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia.

Spring is likely to bring above-normal temperatures to most of the continental United States and northern Alaska, except in the Pacific Northwest, the extreme northern Great Plains and Hawaii, which are expected to be cooler than normal.

"We have been experiencing a very unusually cold pattern with a jet (stream) far south of normal," Ed O'Lenic of NOAA's Climate Prediction Center told a telephone briefing. "As the sun gets higher in the sky, sooner or later that's got to stop."

That usually happens by late April, when temperatures are influenced by soils that are then dry and heat up quickly, O'Lenic said. In addition, temperatures in the northern Pacific can influence land temperatures and right now those ocean temperatures are in a relatively warm pattern.

The El Nino/La Nina pattern of warm or cool water in the equatorial Pacific, which can also have a powerful impact on U.S. weather, "is about as neutral as I've ever seen it," he said. In neutral periods, the influence of El Nino/La Nina on U.S. weather is at its lowest.

Snowpack this winter has been heavy in the northern United States, but that will not necessarily alleviate the drought in the country's mid-section, O'Lenic said. Five or six years of dry conditions are unlikely to be undone by seasonal precipitation.

Even this winter's heavy snowpack may not solve the problem, Furgione said.

Because the ground below the snow is frozen so thoroughly, the warm-up expected in April could make snow-melt run off frozen ground without soaking in, she said.

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Two of the Great Lakes have hit their lowest water levels ever recorded, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday, capping more than a decade of below-normal rain and snowfall and higher temperatures that boost evaporation.

Measurements taken last month show Lake Huron and Lake Michigan have reached their lowest ebb since record keeping began in 1918, and the lakes could set additional records over the next few months, the corps said. The lakes were 29 inches below their long-term average and had declined 17 inches since January 2012.

The other Great Lakes — Superior, Erie and Ontario — were also well below average.

"We're in an extreme situation," said Keith Kompoltowicz, watershed hydrology chief for the corps district office in Detroit.

---

The low water has caused heavy economic losses by forcing cargo ships to carry lighter loads, leaving boat docks high and dry, and damaging fish-spawning areas. And vegetation has sprung up in newly exposed shoreline bottomlands, a turnoff for hotel customers who prefer sandy beaches.

The corps' report came as shippers pleaded with Congress for more money to dredge ever-shallower harbors and channels. Shippers are taxed to support a harbor maintenance fund, but only about half of the revenue is spent on dredging. The remainder is diverted to the treasury for other purposes. Legislation to change that policy is pending before Congress.

"Plunging water levels are beyond anyone's control, but the dredging crisis is man-made," said James Weakley, president of the Cleveland-based Lake Carriers' Association.

Kompoltowicz said the Army corps might reconsider a long-debated proposal to place structures in a river to reduce the flow of water away from Lakes Huron and Lake Michigan, which are connected.

Scientists say lake levels are cyclical and controlled mostly by nature. They began a steep decline in the late 1990s and have usually lagged well below their historical averages since then.

But studies have shown that Huron and Michigan fell by 10 to 16 inches because of dredging over the years to deepen the navigational channel in the St. Clair River, most recently in the 1960s. Dredging of the river, which is on the south end of Lake Huron, accelerated the flow of water southward from the two lakes toward Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean.

Groups representing shoreline property owners, primarily in Lake Huron's Georgian Bay, have demanded action to slow the Lake Huron and Michigan outflow to make up for losses that resulted from dredging, which they contend are even greater than officials have acknowledged.

Although the Army corps produced a list of water-slowing options in 1972, including miniature dams and sills that resemble speed bumps along the river bottom, nothing was done because the lakes were in a period of above-average levels that lasted nearly three decades, Kompoltowicz said.

The corps has congressional authorization to take action but would need money for an updated study as a first step, he said. The Detroit office is considering a funding request, but it would have to compete with other projects nationwide and couldn't get into the budget before 2015.

"It's no guarantee that we're going to get it, especially in this budget climate," Kompoltowicz said. "But there are serious impacts to navigation and shoreline property owners from this extreme event. It's time to revisit this."

Scientists and engineers convened by the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian agency that deals with shared waterways, issued reports in 2009 and last year that opposed trying to regulate the Great Lakes by placing structures at choke points such as the St. Clair River. The commission has conducted public hearings and will issue a statement in about a month, spokesman John Nevin said.

Roger Gauthier, a retired staff hydrologist with the Army corps, said a series of "speed bumps" could be put in the river at a reasonable cost within a few years. Without such measures, he warned, "it would take years of consistent rain" to return Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to normal.

The drought that crippled many communities across the nation last year shows little sign of retreating, and the threat of persistent water scarcity is spurring efforts to preserve every drop.

As the drought of 2012 creeps into 2013, experts say the slow-spreading catastrophe presents near-term problems for a key U.S. agricultural region and potential long-term challenges for millions of Americans.

"Everyone is wondering whether this dry weather is the new norm ... or an anomaly that will soon pass," said Barney Austin, director of hydraulic services for INTERA Inc, an Austin, Texas-based geoscience and engineering consulting firm. "We all hope for the latter, but it's hard to tell."

The signs of distress and the search for answers are most prevalent in the Plains, where historic drought blankets much of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and parts of Texas.

---

This month the small Oklahoma farming town of Wapanucka lost water completely when the spring-fed wells the community relies on ran dry. Officials closed the town's school and residents had to do without tap water until the town could run a line to a neighboring water district.

In Texas, state lawmakers are pushing for a $2 billion fund to finance water infrastructure projects as numerous communities face their own shortages. But it won't be soon enough to help rice farmers, who were told this month that there is not likely to be enough water to irrigate their fields this spring.

Meanwhile, in the big wheat-growing state of Kansas, penalties for exceeding water use limits for irrigation were doubled this month and Gov. Sam Brownback has launched a task force to come up with strategies to counter statewide shortages.

"It's going to be dry again this year," said Lane Letourneau, water appropriations manager for the Kansas Agriculture Department. "We consider this a really big deal."

Searching for solutions
Water use is already tightly curtailed in many states. Years of low rainfall and high heat - last year was the hottest on record for the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - have diminished surface waters even as population and water demand expand.

As well, agricultural and oil and gas interests are pumping the precious commodity from underground aquifers at a pace that often cannot be matched by natural replenishment.

"Water has been viewed as a basic commodity, a basic right," said Les Lampe, a water expert with consultancy Black & Veatch. "You turn on the tap and water comes out and you don't pay very much for it. That has to change."

Farmers are feeling the pain of water shortages most acutely. After multibillion-dollar crop and livestock losses tied to last year's drought, they fear more losses are coming.

Texas rice growers who depend on the lower Colorado River valley for survival are eyeing the fluctuating levels of two key lakes used for irrigation when river levels are too low.

State officials said this month that without enough rain by spring, rice farmers could be completely cut off from irrigation, jeopardizing about 2 percent of the U.S. crop and about $1 billion for the Texas economy.

"We've got a shortage of water," said Ronald Gertson, a rice grower and chairman of the Colorado Water Issues Committee. "People are going to be both hungry and thirsty before they wake up to this problem."

Forecasts show drier-than-normal weather likely prevailing in the Plains and western Midwest for the next few months at least. But even normal rainfall levels would not be enough to fully recharge resources.

Three to five times more rain than normal is needed in key corn-growing areas that include Nebraska and Kansas, for instance, to ease soil dryness after last summer's drought, according to Don Keeney, an agricultural meteorologist with Cropcast weather service.

Roughly 60.26 percent of the contiguous United States was in at least moderate drought as of January 8, according to a "Drought Monitor" report issued by a group of federal and state climatology experts. Severe drought still blanketed 86.20 percent of the High Plains.

"This drought certainly has gotten people's attention," said Joe Straus, speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. "Regardless of whether it starts raining now or not, long-term water planning is essential. We need to be responsible."

For some, it's already an emergency. Persistent dry conditions in north-central Oklahoma led officials in Payne County to declare a state of emergency this month as the reservoir providing water to nearly 16,000 residents in seven counties fell to record low levels.

The approximately 500 residents of Wapanucka are talking of higher rates to fund a permanent pipeline to a new water source. But running out of water has shown how harsh doing without water can be, said Julie Wallis, Wapanucka's city water clerk.

"We are not going to be the only ones who this happens to," said Wallis. "It's coming."

From the archives, Aug. 2012: Drought: the 'new normal'?

 

CHICAGO -- The U.S. Corn Belt - the world's top grain region - is seeing another dry winter after the worst summer drought in half a century, reducing prospects for a bumper summer harvest that would help ease global food prices, crop and climate experts said.

"We are still concerned about getting the leftovers out of the way from the drought of 2012. At this time we would not anticipate a national corn yield above the trend," said Iowa State University climatologist Elwynn Taylor, who has studied crop production for decades. "Rather, we would expect a fourth consecutive year of below-trend crop, not as far below as in 2012 but still not up to par."

The 2012 drought locked two-thirds of the U.S. continental land mass in severe drought last summer, cutting production of the biggest crop, corn, by 27 percent from early season estimates.

The U.S. supplies more than half of world exports of corn, which is the top livestock feed for meat and dairy animals, the main feedstock for ethanol production, and the leading ingredient in dozens of food and industrial products from vegetable oil to sweeteners, paints and plastics. As such, its price is a key for food inflation and its supply outlook is closely watched by Federal Reserve policymakers, bankers, farm suppliers and food processors.

---

On Thursday, the government's weekly U.S. Drought Monitor said that 42.05 percent of the continental United States remained in severe to exceptional drought, down from 42.45 percent the previous week. Parts of the Corn Belt east of the Mississippi River and parts of the central Plains received snow over the last week, providing some much-needed moisture. But the snow did not offer much drought relief, with little improvement expected over the winter, according to the report.

Taylor and other crop specialists said continued lack of snow and rain was the biggest threat in the western Corn Belt - Minnesota and South Dakota south to Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas. Those states produce about half the U.S. crop.

Taylor said in December it would take about 16 inches of precipitation by April 1 to recharge moisture in Corn Belt soils, up from the usual 12 inches that farmers look for over the winter.

Worst drought in decades hits Brazil's Northeast

The moisture is vital to spur adequate corn, soybean and spring wheat plant roots, which extend several feet down to tap into subsoil moisture. Persistent drought over more than a year in many areas meant plant roots drove down 8 or 9 feet last year in search of moisture, compared with the usual 5 feet.

"Most agricultural soils hold about 2 inches of water available to crops per foot of soil," Taylor said. "With most of the moisture gone that means it will take 16 inches of water soaking into the soil and in some places 18 to fully replenish it."

A long shot
Jim Angel, state climatologist in Illinois, said the state's conditions had improved slightly but have a long way to go before spring. Some areas of Illinois would need up to 21 inches of precipitation to catch up.

"The 2012 drought is not over yet. There are several areas of the state that are 8 to 12 inches below normal in rainfall, some places even more. You don't have to totally erase the deficits to be out of the drought but you have to come pretty close," Angel said. "In wintertime it's tough because we don't get that much precipitation. It's a long shot at this point."

Illinois saw its second hottest year on record in 2012, averaging 55.5 degrees, or 3.3 degrees above normal, and the 10th driest. The state's subsoil moisture is still rated 67 percent short to very short, according to the Illinois crop update issued this week.

Nebraska, the third largest corn producing state, has 77 percent of the state remaining in exceptional drought, according to the latest Drought Monitor.

Louisiana cemeteries sinking, washing away

"The concern is we just went through a 14-15 month stretch of incredibly dry weather in most locations in the state, excluding the southeast corner. For the vast majority of locations outside that area we were looking at 40 to 50 percent of annual precipitation that fell in 2012, and that does not include the exceptionally dry fall of 2011," said Al Dutcher, state climatologist for Nebraska.

To eliminate the soil moisture deficits over the next three months, Dutcher said central Nebraska needs 300 percent of normal precipitation while northeast and western Nebraska need 500 to 700 percent of normal precipitation this winter.

"One key issue for us since we are not getting a massive amount of moisture is to keep a protective snow layer across the northern and central Plains so we don't break dormancy as early as it did last year," Dutcher said. "Last year we were putting leaves on trees in early March, typically that doesn't happen until early April. That additional month of water use compounded the problem with the drought as we got into mid-summer."

Prayers for El Nino?
Scientists are hoping they will have a better indication by early February of the seasonal weather pattern, which depends on whether conditions turn to an El Nino or La Nina - global weather atmospheric anomalies based on the warming or cooling of an area of the southern Pacific Ocean that can dictate precipitation patterns in North America.

El Nino, a warming of Pacific waters, often leads to wetter weather in the U.S. Midwest. La Nina, a cooling of the waters, can have the opposite effect.

Climate experts say the El Nino/La Nina outlook is currently "neutral" based on data from the National Weather Service and other government forecasts.

Video: Drought conditions dry out Mississippi River

"We do not have any clear signal that's telling us whether it could be wetter or drier or near normal precipitation. That's the same for temperature," said John Eise, climate services program manager for the National Weather Service. "When you're looking out that far, going out a month or three months, it depends very strongly on whether we are in an El Nino or La Nina. Right now we are between the two."

The next El Nino-La Nina outlook from the U.S. Climate Prediction Center will be released Jan. 10.

Taylor said a return of La Nina, which the U.S. experienced in 2012, could be devastating: a return of abnormally high temperatures and diminished rains.

Video: A promising sign for California’s water supply

"We can be concerned with this dryness but we could have the same setup as 2001, 2003, 2007 that followed major drought years in western Nebraska where it turned exceptionally wet in the spring, reduced irrigation demands. We still carried a high hydrological drought, but agriculturally we were at yield trend or above trend," Dutcher said.

For the moment, however, the worries remain. Freezing temperatures hitting much of the Midwest this week will prevent any moisture from permeating the soil.

"Even if we got normal precipitation through the winter that would not necessarily take care of the drought west of the Mississippi River. It's pretty tough now," Eise said. 

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LIBERAL, Kan. - Real estate agent Mark Faulkner recalls a day in early November when he was putting up a sign near Ulysses, Kansas, in 60-miles-per-hour winds that blew up blinding dust clouds. 

"There were places you could not see, it was blowing so hard," Faulkner said. 

Residents of the Great Plains over the last year or so have experienced storms reminiscent of the 1930s Dust Bowl. Experts say the new storms have been brought on by a combination of historic drought, a dwindling Ogallala Aquifer underground water supply, climate change and government farm programs. 

---

Nearly 62 percent of the United States was gripped by drought, as of Dec. 25, and "exceptional" drought enveloped parts of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. 

There is no relief in sight for the Great Plains at least through the winter, according to Drought Monitor forecasts, which could portend more dust clouds. 

A wave of dust storms during the 1930s crippled agriculture over a vast area of the Great Plains and led to an exodus of people, many to California, dramatized in John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath." 

Drought worsens in High Plains; winter outlook grim

While few people believe it could get that bad again, the new storms have some experts worried that similar conditions -- if not the catastrophic environmental disaster of the 1930s -- are returning to parts of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado. 

"I hope we don't talk ourselves into complacency with easy assumptions that a Dust Bowl could never happen again," said Craig Cox, agriculture director for the Environmental Working Group, a national conservation group that supports converting more tilled soil to grassland. "Instead, we should do what it takes to make sure it doesn't happen again." 

Satellite images on Dec. 19 showed a dust storm stretching over an area of 150 miles from extreme southwestern Oklahoma across the Panhandle of Texas around Lubbock to extreme eastern New Mexico, said Jody James, National Weather Service meteorologist in Lubbock. Visibility was reduced to half a mile in places, stoked by high winds, he said. At least one person was killed and more than a dozen injured in car crashes. 

"I definitely think these dust storms will become more common until we get more measurable precipitation," James said. 

'Dirty 30s' 
The Great Plains is a flat, semi-arid, area with few trees, where vast herds of buffalo once thrived on native grasses. Settlers plowed up most of the grassland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to create the wheat-growing breadbasket of the United States, encouraged by high commodity prices and free "homestead" land from the government. 

The era known as the "Dirty 30s" -- chronicled by Ken Burns in a Public Broadcasting Service documentary that aired in November -- as when a 1930s drought gripped the Great Plains and winds carried away exposed soil in massive dust clouds. 

More stories in Environment

Bill Fitzgerald, 87, a farmer near Sublette, Kansas, remembers "Black Sunday" on April 14, 1935, when a clear, sunny day in southwest Kansas turned black as night by mid afternoon because of a massive cloud of dust that swept from Nebraska to the Texas panhandle. 

"My older brother and I were in my dad's 1927 or '28 Chevy truck a mile north and a mile west of the house and we saw it rolling in," Fitzgerald said. "It was about 10 p.m. when it cleared enough for us to go home." 

Farming practices have vastly improved since the 1930s. Farmers now leave plant remnants on the top of the soil and less soil is exposed, to preserve moisture and prevent erosion. 

Irrigation beginning in the 1940s from the Ogallala aquifer, a huge network of water under the Great Plains, also made land less vulnerable to dust storms. 

Drying 
But the Ogallala aquifer is drying up after years of drawing out more water than was replenished. 

Many farmers have had to drill deeper wells to find water. Others are giving up on irrigation altogether, which means they can no longer grow crops of high-yielding and lucrative corn. They will instead grow wheat, cotton or grain sorghum on dry land, which depends completely on natural precipitation in an area that typically gets 20 inches of rain a year or less. 

Near Sublette, Kansas, farmer Gail Wright said he would probably give up irrigating two square miles of his land and would plant wheat and grain sorghum instead of corn because of the diminishing aquifer. Drilling deeper wells would cost $120,000 each, Wright said. 

"When we drilled those wells in the 1960s and 70s, we were doing 1,500 or 1,600 gallons per minute," said Wright. "Now, they are down to anywhere from 400 to 600 gallons per minute. We probably pumped out 200 feet of water." 

Another farmer in Sublette, 79-year-old Lawrence Withers, whose family farms land his grandfather settled in 1887, is resigned to a future without irrigation. 

"We have pumped 170 feet off the aquifer, that's gone. There's just a little tick of water at the bottom," he said. 

The Ogallala supplies water to 176,000 square miles of land in parts of eight states from the Texas panhandle to southern South Dakota. That amounts to about 27 percent of all irrigated land in the nation, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. 

60 percent of lower 48 states now in drought

The volume of water in the aquifer stood at about 2.9 billion acre feet in 2009, a decline of about 9 percent since 1950, according to the Geological Survey. About two-and-a-half times as much water was drawn out in the 14 years ended 2009 as during the prior 15-year period, data shows. 

The water may run out in 25 years or less in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and southwest Kansas, although in other areas it has 50 to 200 years left, according to the Geological Survey. 

Rationing has been imposed on irrigation in the region but it may be too little too late. 

"It's a situation where across the Plains the demand far exceeds the annual recharge," said Mark Rude, executive director of the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District. 

Record drought 
The worst drought in decades has exacerbated the situation. The semi-arid area around Lubbock, which typically gets about 19 inches of rain a year, received less than 6 inches in 2011, the lowest ever recorded. This year was better but still far below normal at 12.5 inches, meteorologist James said. 

Climate change is also having an impact on the region, said atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, co-director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. 

Grain prices soar as drought impact deepens

"It is definitely hotter in the summer and drier in the summer because of climate change," she said. 

The average annual temperature in Lubbock has increased by one full degree over the last decade, according to National Weather Service data, and the average amount of rainfall has fallen during summer months by about .50 inch over the decade. 

Some say government policies are making things worse. 

Federal government subsidized crop insurance pays farmers whether they produce a crop or not, encouraging farmers to plant even in a drought year. 

Another subsidized U.S. government program that pays farmers to take sensitive marginal land out of crop production and put it into grassland is gradually shrinking. 

In a possible case of history repeating itself, high commodity prices are encouraging farmers to break up the land and plant crops when the 10-year conservation contracts with the government expire, said environmentalist Cox. This is similar to what happened in the 1920s when vast areas of grassland were plowed up. 

The government also has imposed restrictions on how much land can go into conservation reserves to save money at a time of massive U.S. budget deficits, he said. 

The amount of land in conservation reserves has declined by more than 2.3 million acres over the last five years in five states of the Great Plains -- Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data. 

If most of that land is plowed up for crops it could lead to more dust storms in the future. 

"I think you are probably going to see increased erosion if that happens," said Richard Zartman, Chairman of the Plant and Soil Science Department at Texas Tech, adding that it was unlikely to get as bad as the Dust Bowl days. 

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A warm winter, a record warm spring, a record hot July and a warmer than average autumn combined to make it even more likely that 2012 will go down as the warmest year in the contiguous United States on record, the federal government reported Thursday.

Just how likely? 

"For 2012 not to be record warm, December would have to be unprecedented," Jake Crouch, a scientist at the National Climatic Data Center, told NBC News. "December temperatures would need to be more than 1 degree F colder than the coldest December on record, which occurred in 1983."

---

Based on past numbers, he added, "the odds of that occurring are less than 0.3 percent."

In other words, he said, "2012 has a greater than 99.7 percent chance of being record warm." That's up from Crouch's odds just last month of 90 percent.

January-November was already the warmest first 11 months of any year in records that go back to 1895, according to data released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the center. The average national temperature through November was 57.1 degrees F. 

The year has had a string of warm events, Crouch noted. "We had our fourth warmest winter (2011/2012) on record, our warmest spring, a very hot summer with the hottest month on record for the nation (July 2012), and a warmer than average autumn," he said.

"The warm winter and spring were associated with an unusually northern track of the jet stream, which kept cold Arctic air out of the contiguous United States," he added. "The early start to spring was a precursor to the summer drought. The large size of the summer drought was associated with a large area of the country experiencing a very hot summer. Those conditions continued into much of the fall season."

"When you put these local and regional factors on top of a warming trend for the contiguous United States and the globe," he said, "the result has been the warmest year on record for the Lower 48."

If 2012 does go down as the warmest year on record in the U.S. it would depose 1998, which averaged 54.3 degrees F.

Related: Arctic 'Report Card' lists worsening warming signals
Related: Snow, cold missing from much of US

Globally, 2012 is likely to be among the top 10 warmest on record, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said last month.

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Drought is tightening its grip on the central United States as winter weather sets in, threatening to ravage the new wheat crop and spelling more hardship for farmers and ranchers already weary of the costly and ongoing dry conditions.

While conditions started to improve earlier in November, they turned harsh to close out the month as above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation proved a dire combination in many regions, according to the Drought Monitor, a weekly compilation of data gathered by federal and academic scientists issued Thursday.

Forecasts for the next several days show little to no relief and weather watchers are predicting a drier than average winter for much of the central United States.

"The drought's impacts are far reaching," said Eric Luebehusen, a meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in the report.

---

The U.S. High Plains, which includes key farm states of Nebraska, South Dakota, and Kansas, are the hardest hit. In that region, almost 58 percent of the land area is in extreme or exceptional drought, the worst categories of drought. A week ago, the tally was 55.94 percent.

Nebraska is by far the most parched state in the nation. One hundred percent of the state is considered in severe or worse drought, with 77.46 percent of the state considered in "exceptional" drought - the worst level, according to the Drought Monitor.

Overall, roughly 62.65 percent of the contiguous United States was in at least "moderate" drought as of November 27, up from 60.09 percent a week earlier,

The portion of the contiguous United States under "extreme" or "exceptional" drought - the two most dire classifications - expanded to 20.12 percent from 19.04 percent.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said this week that U.S. farm income will drop by 3 percent this year due in part to the ravages of the worst drought in half a century. So far, crop insurers have paid $6.3 billion on losses this year, USDA said. Some analysts say the still-persisting drought in the Farm Belt will drive indemnities to $20 billion.

On top of the crop losses in 2012, more losses are likely for 2013 if soil moisture does not improve. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said this week that the condition of the winter wheat crop fell to an all-time low for late November with only 33 percent of the new crop rated good to excellent, and 26 percent was rated poor to very poor as the plants headed into winter dormancy.

In South Dakota, 64 percent of the crop was rated poor to very poor; and at least 40 percent of the wheat crop in Texas, Nebraska and Oklahoma was also rated poor to very poor. Top producer Kansas had 25 percent of its crop rated poor to very poor.

Though light showers are possible through the Mississippi Valley and possibly into southern Texas in the next few days, dry, warm conditions are expected across the remainder of the contiguous United States, the Drought Monitor said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecast warmer-than-average temperatures in much of Texas, northward through the Central and Northern Plains and westward across the Southwest. A drier-than-average winter is forecast for Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and through the upper Midwest.

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DECATUR, Ill. -- At the height of this year's drought, decision-makers at the agribusiness giant Archers Daniels Midland kept an uneasy eye on the reservoir down the hill from their headquarters.

At one point, the water level fell to within 2 inches of the point where the company was in danger of being told for the first time ever that it couldn't draw as much as it wanted. The company uses millions of gallons of water a day to turn corn and soybeans into everything from ethanol and cattle feed to cocoa and a sweetener used in soft drinks and many other foods.

Rain eventually lifted Lake Decatur's level again. But the close call left ADM convinced that, like many Midwestern companies and the towns where they operate, it could no longer take an unrestricted water supply for granted, especially if drought becomes a more regular occurrence due to climate change or competition ramps up among water users.

While companies in the Great Lakes region and other parts of middle America long counted on water being cheap and plentiful, they now realize they must conserve because finding new water sources is difficult and expensive — if it can be done at all.

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"You've got to plan for the worst, and be prepared for that," said Brad Crookshank, the wastewater superintendent for ADM's corn processing plant in Decatur. "There's not a lot of low-hanging fruit for additional water supplies."

ADM, which pumps more water out of Lake Decatur than any other consumer, wasn't the only big water-user affected by the drought. Two Midwestern power plants shut down for periods this summer because they lacked water to operate, according to Midwest ISO, the electrical-grid operator for the region. MISO spokesman Brandon Wright declined to identify the plants because they're owned by grid clients.

With half of Minnesota, the "Land of 10,000 Lakes," still in deep drought, the Department of Natural Resources told 50 water users, including several major ones, to stop drawing from rivers and streams in October.

They included a paper plant owned by Sappi North America and a ceiling panel factory owned by USG Corp. The companies declined to comment, but DNR officials said they expressed concern about the future of their businesses.

"We have discussions like, 'Are you going to shut us down or put people out of work?' And we say 'You need to identify (alternative) sources of water so we're not put in this position,'" said Dave Leuthe, deputy director of the Minnesota DNR Ecological and Water Resources Division.

Homeowners and small businesses are used to being asked to conserve water during drought. But big companies are often the last to face restrictions. Factories provide jobs, and utilities generate the power that keeps the lights and machinery on. Limiting their access to water could mean cutting production and employment.

"If you're going to start playing hardball with those businesses, they might decide this is too much trouble, we're going to move to another location," said Michael Doran, a professor of water and wastewater engineering at the University of Wisconsin.

In Decatur, ADM is king. The company employs 4,000 people in the town of 76,000. And it's influential far beyond the city's borders. ADM has 265 processing plants in 75 countries, is ranked 28th in this year's Fortune 500 and is legendary for political influence.

Twenty-five years ago, no one at the company was very concerned about water.

But the Midwest drought of 1988 scared ADM into finding ways to reuse it. The result, in part, is a 25-acre pond full of waste water, which will be cleaned by bacteria in frothy, churning brown lagoons that sit nearby. Eventually, the water will be used again, mainly for cooling.

"It sounds real noble to say we want to conserve water," Crookshank said. "In reality it was, 'Don't shut the plant down.'"

Water is now an ongoing concern. When Decatur officials started warning residents this summer that restrictions were coming, they also initiated weekly talks with ADM and another local agribusiness firm, Tate & Lyle, about the receding lake. The discussions, however, had a different tone than orders given to other businesses, such as car washes, to stop using city water.

"The discussions that we've had with ADM and Tate & Lyle involve, what kind of restrictions can they live with?" said Keith Alexander, the city's director of water management. Aside from hospitals and the fire department, the companies are the most critical water users in town, he added.

Other companies started hauling water. Some shut down. None were happy.

Billingsley Service Center & Towing installed a mammoth water tank at its car wash and hauled in $2,000 worth of water a week to stay open, co-owner Jay Billingsley said. But efforts to talk to the city about easing its restrictions were fruitless, he said, even though the car wash consumes a fraction of what the big companies drink.

"I understand (car washes are) not a necessity to live," Billingsley said, "but at the same point, the same time, there are people that depend on this industry."

The city finally eased restrictions on car washes in late October after it rained. By then, officials were uncomfortably close to telling ADM that it, too, would have to cut back — by 15 percent.

Crookshank said the company had figured out ways to avoid curtailing production, so no jobs would be lost. Tate & Lyle also found ways to reduce water use, seeing the drought as an opportunity, spokesman Chris Olsen said.

But the two companies would like the city to expand its water supply, a costly endeavor. Decatur is spending $1.6 million on four temporary wells, and a water consultant who works with a number communities around the country facing similar problems recommends capturing more of the river that feeds the lake, though that could take water from other communities grappling with the drought downstream.

"I hear that all the time," said the consultant, Pamela Kenel. "We need to be designing for a new normal."

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A storm system that brought cold, wet weather to much of the United States last week helped ease drought in many states, but some areas that were most in need of moisture were missed, according to a climatology report issued on Thursday. 

The High Plains, which includes key farm states of Nebraska, South Dakota, and Kansas, saw slight improvement last week due to good precipitation. But three quarters of both Kansas and Nebraska continued to suffer from extreme or exceptional drought.

In South Dakota, extreme or worse drought still covers nearly 55 percent of the state. 

Roughly 58.83 percent of the contiguous United States was in at least "moderate" drought as of November 13, down from 59.48 percent a week earlier, according to Thursday's Drought Monitor, a weekly compilation of data gathered by federal and academic scientists. 

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The portion of the contiguous United States under "extreme" or "exceptional" drought - the two most dire classifications - improved to 18.30 percent from 19.36 percent. 

The persistent drought has hindered growth of the new winter wheat crop in many U.S. Plains states. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said this week that wheat in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana has shown very poor emergence and is well behind the average pace. 

Texas and Oklahoma, also key wheat growing states, continued to struggle with drought. 

Overall, the new winter wheat crop is rated 36 percent good to excellent, below last year's rating at this time of 50 percent. Kansas wheat is rated 21 percent poor to very poor. 

Wheat in Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado, and Oklahoma is struggling with more than 30 percent of it in each of those states rated poor to very poor, according to USDA. 

In Texas, the drought deepened as the state was largely missed by the rain storms that swept through the Plains and Midwest. In contrast, most of Oklahoma, Arkansas, and western Tennessee measured widespread "decent" precipitation, according to the Drought Monitor. 

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