🌵 US Drought Monitor Scraper

🚀 Export weekly US Drought Monitor statistics in one run. Pull the national series, any state, or any county straight from the University of Nebraska Lincoln data service.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-06-08 · 📊 Up to 15 fields per record · national, state, and county coverage · one record per weekly map

Turn the US Drought Monitor into clean, structured weekly records you can drop into a spreadsheet, a climate dashboard, or a research notebook. Pick an area of interest and a date range, and get one row per published map week with the share of land in each drought category.

Coverage matches what the US Drought Monitor publishes through the UNL data service: the country-wide CONUS and total series, every state by its FIPS code, and any county by its 5 digit FIPS code. Each week reports the percent of the area in None, D0 (abnormally dry), D1 (moderate), D2 (severe), D3 (extreme), and D4 (exceptional) drought.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Climate and hydrology researchers	Build long weekly drought time series
Agriculture and commodity analysts	Watch crop region dryness trends
Water utilities and policy teams	Track conditions for planning and reporting
Journalists and data storytellers	Chart how drought shifts week to week

📋 What the US Drought Monitor Scraper does

This Actor calls the public US Drought Monitor area percent statistics service and returns one clean record per weekly map for the area you choose:

• United States (national) — the CONUS and total series with None and D0 to D4 coverage.
• State — pick a state and get its weekly drought breakdown.
• County — supply a 5 digit county FIPS code for county level detail with county and state labels.

You choose the date range, the statistics type, and how many records come back, and every record carries a scrapedAt timestamp.

🎬 Full Demo (🚧 Coming soon)

⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Description
aoi	select	Area of interest. us for the national series, or a state from the list. Defaults to us.
countyFips	string	Optional 5 digit county FIPS code, for example 06037. When set, it overrides the area of interest and returns county level rows.
startdate	string	First date of the range, for example 1/1/2024 or 2024-01-01.
enddate	string	Last date of the range, for example 2/1/2024.
statisticsType	select	Traditional (cumulative) or Categorical (non overlapping). Defaults to traditional.
maxItems	integer	How many records to return. Free plan is capped at 10.

Example 1 — national series for early 2024

{
    "aoi": "us",
    "startdate": "1/1/2024",
    "enddate": "3/1/2024",
    "statisticsType": "1",
    "maxItems": 20
}

Example 2 — a single county

{
    "countyFips": "06037",
    "startdate": "1/1/2024",
    "enddate": "6/1/2024",
    "statisticsType": "1",
    "maxItems": 25
}

⚠️ Good to Know: The US Drought Monitor publishes one map per week, so a one month range returns roughly four or five rows. For the national series the area name comes back as both CONUS and Total, so a single national run mixes those two series. State rows are selected by state FIPS code, not by abbreviation.

📊 Output

Each weekly record looks like this:

Field	Description
📍 areaOfInterest	Area label (CONUS, Total, a state abbreviation, or county and state)
🆔 fips	County FIPS code, present for county runs
🏛 county	County name, present for county runs
🗺 state	State abbreviation, present for state and county runs
📅 mapDate	Date of the weekly map
🟢 none	Percent of area in no drought
🟡 d0	Percent in D0 abnormally dry
🟠 d1	Percent in D1 moderate drought
🔴 d2	Percent in D2 severe drought
🟤 d3	Percent in D3 extreme drought
⚫ d4	Percent in D4 exceptional drought
▶ validStart	Start of the week the map is valid for
⏹ validEnd	End of the week the map is valid for
🔢 statisticFormatID	1 for traditional, 2 for categorical
🕒 scrapedAt	Collection timestamp
❌ error	Null on success

Real sample — national (CONUS)

{
    "areaOfInterest": "CONUS",
    "fips": null,
    "county": null,
    "state": null,
    "mapDate": "2024-02-27T00:00:00",
    "none": 53.16,
    "d0": 46.84,
    "d1": 21.59,
    "d2": 7.79,
    "d3": 1.49,
    "d4": 0.14,
    "validStart": "2024-02-27T00:00:00",
    "validEnd": "2024-03-04T23:59:59",
    "statisticFormatID": 1,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-08T22:20:56.134Z",
    "error": null
}

Real sample — state (Texas)

{
    "areaOfInterest": "TX",
    "fips": null,
    "county": null,
    "state": "TX",
    "mapDate": "2024-01-30T00:00:00",
    "none": 56.93,
    "d0": 43.07,
    "d1": 22.75,
    "d2": 9.68,
    "d3": 1.92,
    "d4": 0.00,
    "validStart": "2024-01-30T00:00:00",
    "validEnd": "2024-02-05T23:59:59",
    "statisticFormatID": 1,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-08T22:19:04.451Z",
    "error": null
}

Real sample — county (Los Angeles County, CA)

{
    "areaOfInterest": "Los Angeles County, CA",
    "fips": "06037",
    "county": "Los Angeles County",
    "state": "CA",
    "mapDate": "2024-01-30T00:00:00",
    "none": 100.00,
    "d0": 0.00,
    "d1": 0.00,
    "d2": 0.00,
    "d3": 0.00,
    "d4": 0.00,
    "validStart": "2024-01-30T00:00:00",
    "validEnd": "2024-02-05T23:59:59",
    "statisticFormatID": 1,
    "scrapedAt": "2026-06-08T22:18:52.492Z",
    "error": null
}

✨ Why choose this Actor

• One clean record per weekly map, ready for a time series.
• National, state, and county coverage share a single consistent shape.
• Both traditional cumulative and categorical non overlapping percentages are supported.
• No account, no key, and no login required at the source.
• Stable field names that map cleanly onto a database schema.

📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Effort	Structured fields	Coverage	Maintenance
This Actor	One run	Yes	National, state, county	None on your side
Hand-copying from the website	Hours	Inconsistent	Limited	Constant
Writing your own API client	Days	Depends	You build it	You own the upkeep

🚀 How to use

1. Create a free Apify account using this sign-up link.
2. Open the US Drought Monitor Scraper.
3. Choose an aoi, or enter a countyFips for county level data.
4. Set startdate, enddate, the statisticsType, and maxItems.
5. Click Start and grab your results when the run finishes.

💼 Business use cases

Agriculture and commodities

Goal	How this helps
Watch dryness in growing regions	Pull weekly county or state drought levels
Time planting and irrigation calls	Track how D0 to D4 shares move week to week

Water and utilities

Goal	How this helps
Inform conservation decisions	Follow severe and extreme drought coverage
Support planning reports	Snapshot the series for a region and period

Insurance and finance

Goal	How this helps
Assess drought exposure	Map county FIPS coverage to portfolios
Backtest weather risk models	Build long weekly drought histories

Media and research

Goal	How this helps
Chart drought trends	Feed weekly percentages into a visualization
Compare regions	Run multiple states and align by map date

🔌 Automating US Drought Monitor Scraper

Connect runs to the tools you already use:

• Make and Zapier to trigger runs and route records into sheets or databases.
• Slack to post a summary when a run finishes.
• Airbyte to load results into a warehouse.
• GitHub Actions to schedule periodic snapshots.
• Google Drive to archive each run's output.

🌟 Beyond business use cases

• Research: assemble multi year weekly drought series for analysis.
• Personal: keep an eye on conditions in your own county.
• Non-profit: power a community water or conservation resource.
• Experimentation: prototype a climate data app without writing a scraper.

🤖 Ask an AI assistant

Paste your results into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, or Microsoft Copilot and ask it to summarize drought trends, compare states, or flag the weeks with the most extreme coverage.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need an account or key? No. The Actor reads the public US Drought Monitor data service, which needs no login or key.

What area can I pull? The national series, any state from the list, or any county by its 5 digit FIPS code.

How do I get a single state? Choose the state from the aoi dropdown. States are selected internally by their FIPS code.

How do I get a county? Enter the 5 digit county FIPS in countyFips, for example 06037 for Los Angeles County. It overrides the area of interest.

What date format should I use? Both 1/1/2024 and 2024-01-01 work for startdate and enddate.

Why do I see both CONUS and Total for the national run? The source publishes the national series under two labels, CONUS and Total. Filter by areaOfInterest to keep one.

What is the difference between traditional and categorical? Traditional reports each level cumulatively, so D0 includes D1 to D4. Categorical reports each level as its own non overlapping slice.

What do D0 to D4 mean? D0 is abnormally dry, D1 moderate, D2 severe, D3 extreme, and D4 exceptional drought.

How many records will I get? One per weekly map in your date range, so about four or five per month, up to your maxItems.

How fresh is the data? Each run pulls live from the US Drought Monitor service, so it reflects what they have published for your range.

🔌 Integrate with any app

Results are available through the Apify API, so you can pull them into any app, database, or workflow you already run.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection.

🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form

⚠️ Disclaimer: independent tool, not affiliated with the US Drought Monitor, the University of Nebraska Lincoln, USDA, or NOAA. Only publicly available data is collected.