Actionable, user-friendly, and reliable information is essential for risk-informed decision-making across the Mississippi River Basin. In response to impacts of drought in the region, NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) built a Mississippi River Basin Drought and Water Dashboard. 

In the Upper Missouri River Basin (UMRB), catastrophic floods and droughts between 2011 and 2017 highlighted the need for more and better water information to respond to extremes from both sides of the water supply spectrum. But there is a challenge: Monitoring drought typically involves looking at hydrological indicators, like soil moisture and snowpack, through the lens of historical conditions for a given location. The Upper Missouri River Basin Soil Moisture and Snow Maps Dashboard demonstrates an approach for communicating soil moisture and snowpack data when only short periods of record are available.

The 16th annual National Soil Moisture Workshop was hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS) and NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), in partnership with the US Forest Service and Colorado State University. The theme for the June 3–5 meeting was “making soil moisture science actionable.” With 90 in-person participants, this was one of the largest turn outs to date.

Drought and heat often appear together, but new research funded by NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System found that drought can lengthen heat waves occurring at the same time.

The state of Missouri is working to better track water from the sky into the soil, in the hopes that expanded soil moisture data across the state can help decision-makers better predict, prepare for, and track both drought and flood events.