The Southern Plains Drought Assessment Webinar

In December 2025, the Southern Plains Drought Early Warning System, in partnership with the Southern Regional Climate Center, published an assessment of the drought that began in March 2020 and eased in mid-2025, but is still ongoing in some places. This 5-year drought waxed and waned across the Southern Plains, shifting location and extent but never leaving the region. Drought touched the lives of nearly every resident of the Southern Plains states (Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas).

The Southern Plains Drought Assessment illustrates how this multi-year drought impacted multiple economic sectors. Many areas hadn’t fully recovered from past drought in 2010-2015, making the drought impacts especially harder to bear. NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) estimated the economic impact of the drought on agriculture from 2020-2024 exceeded $23 billion.

This webinar will highlight key points from the assessment report, examining drought development, progression, and impacts. It will also look at how drought conditions have changed since the report was published and look ahead at expected drought conditions in the Southern Plains in the weeks and months ahead.

This webinar will be recorded and available here.