Livestock auctions aren’t steadily all-night affairs. However in Texas Lake Nation in June 2022, ranchers dealing with dwindling water provides and dried out pastures amid a worsening drought offered off greater than 4,000 animals in an public sale that lasted just about 24 hours – about 200 cows an hour.
It used to be the peak of a drought that has gripped the Southern Plains for the previous six years – a drought this is nonetheless keeping on in a lot of the area in 2026.
The drought value the agriculture trade throughout Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas an estimated US$23.6 billion in misplaced plants, upper feed prices and promoting off livestock from 2020 via 2024 by myself. As rangeland dried out, it additionally fueled devastating wildfires.
Mud flies as a farmer plows over a failed cotton box on Oct. 4, 2022, in Midway, Texas. Drought and excessive warmth critically broken a lot of the U.S. cotton harvest.
AP Photograph/Eric Homosexual
Traditionally, droughts of this magnitude occur within the Southern Plains about as soon as a decade, however the critical droughts of this century were lasting longer, leaving water provides, local rangelands and farms with little time to get better ahead of the following one hits.
Many livestock manufacturers and rangelands had been nonetheless improving from a critical 2010-2015 drought when a flash drought hit western Texas in spring 2020, marking the start of the present multibillion-dollar, multiyear and multistate drought. Plentiful spring rainfall in 2025 and critical flooding in central Texas that yr weren’t sufficient to finish the drought, and a strong iciness hurricane in overdue January 2026 neglected the driest portions of the area.
Precipitation from a critical iciness hurricane in overdue January 2026, proven in blue and measured in inches, in large part neglected the spaces with the worst drought stipulations, indicated by means of purple contour traces.
UC Merced, NDMC
In a contemporary find out about with colleagues on the Southern Regional Local weather Heart and the Nationwide Built-in Drought Data Device, we assessed the reasons and harm from the continued drought within the Southern Plains.
We discovered 3 key causes for the iconic drought and its harm: emerging temperatures and a L. a. Niña local weather development; water provide shortages; and lingering financial affects from the former drought.
Climate and local weather helped power the drought
The Southern Plains is understood to be a scorching spot for speedy drought building, and the continued drought that began in 2020 isn’t any exception.
Documented “flash droughts” – outlined as sessions of speedy drought onset or intensification of present droughts – happened a minimum of 5 instances within the area from 2020 to 2025. As world temperatures upward push and climates heat, analysis warns that the frequency and severity of flash drought occasions will build up.
The U.S. Drought Track’s per thirty days updates from January 2020 via January 2026 display how drought moved round within the Southern Plains over the ones years however by no means let pass. Darker colours replicate the depth of drought in every location.
Joel Lisonbee; compiled from U.S. Drought Track
For the southern a part of the Southern Plains, iciness precipitation is intently connected to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, a local weather development that is affecting climate world wide. 5 of the previous six years exhibited a L. a. Niña development, which generally manner the area sees winters which can be hotter and drier than commonplace.
L. a. Niña used to be most likely the principle motive force – despite the fact that now not the one motive force – of the drought for Texas and southwest Oklahoma, and some of the causes drought stipulations have persisted into 2026.
The Southern Plains have an extended historical past with critical droughts. The Mud Bowl of the early Thirties is also the best-known instance. However a historical past with drought doesn’t make it any more uncomplicated to control when plants and water provides dry up.
Deeply rooted water shortages
The warmth and dryness since 2020 have left lots of the area’s rivers, reservoirs or even groundwater reserves smartly underneath reasonable.
San Antonio’s reservoirs all reached record-low ranges in 2024 and 2025, as did the Edwards Aquifer, which supplies water for more or less 2.5 million other people. They had been nonetheless low as 2026 started. Floor water and groundwater sources throughout central and western Texas were depleted to the purpose that even a couple of large storms can’t fill up them.
A couple of main rivers go with the flow into the Southern Plains from different drought-affected areas. Believe the Rio Grande, which starts in Colorado and winds via New Mexico and alongside Texas’ southern border: No longer simplest has the Decrease Rio Grande valley in southern Texas neglected out on wanted precipitation this iciness, so did the Rio Grande headwaters in southern Colorado.
Colorado is dealing with a snow drought in iciness 2026, as is way of the western U.S. If it continues, there shall be much less snowmelt come summer season to feed rivers, such because the Rio Grande, or fill reservoirs. In early February, the Elephant Butte, Amistad and Falcon reservoirs, alongside the Rio Grande, had been simplest 11%, 34%, and 20% complete, respectively.
Lingering financial affects
Like water provides, the economic system doesn’t simply get better when the rains go back.
Some of the causes the present drought has been so expensive is that portions of the area had now not absolutely recovered from the 2010-2015 drought when the most recent one started in 2020. With just a five-year destroy between droughts, the panorama behaved like anyone with an already weakened immune machine who stuck a chilly.
The proportion of land in several ranges of drought or wetness for every month in accordance with the nine-month Standardized Precipitation Index main as much as the chosen date. Reds point out drier stipulations; blues point out wetter stipulations.
Nationwide Built-in Drought Data Device, NOAA Drought.gov
Right through the 2010-2015 drought, livestock manufacturers in Texas offered off about 20% of the statewide herd as water become scarce and rangeland dried up. Rebuilding a herd after a drought is a sluggish procedure. Pasture restoration can take a yr or extra, and a new child heifer will take two years to mature and bring her personal first calf.
Livestock herds had nonetheless now not returned to pre-2010 ranges when the 2022 drought height pressured any other mass sell-off. From 2020 via 2024, Texas’s herd dimension declined from 13.1 million to twelve million; Oklahoma’s declined from 5.3 million to 4.7 million; and Kansas’ declined from 6.5 million to six.15 million.
Taking a look past cattle, a big proportion of the Southern Plains’ plants failed in 2022, the height yr of the drought. In Texas, 25% of the corn crop used to be planted however by no means harvested, and 45% of the soybean crop used to be in a similar fashion deserted. A standard season would have yielded a $2.4 billion cotton crop in Texas, however 74% of that crop used to be deserted, slashing its worth to more or less $640 million.
Finishing the Southern Plains drought
Is the tip in sight? With L. a. Niña fading in early 2026 and its reverse, El Niño, probably at the horizon, there’s a possibility for wetter stipulations that might cut back the drought within the fall and iciness months of 2026.
However the Southern Plains nonetheless must get via spring and summer season first. Finishing a drought like this calls for constant precipitation over a number of months, and drought stipulations are more likely to worsen ahead of they recover.
