UNDATED (WSAU)   The snow from last weekend did almost nothing to relieve dry conditions in the soil. The U-S Drought Monitor said 88-and-a-half percent of Wisconsin’s land area was in some type of drought this week. That’s just four-hundredths-of-a-percent less than a week ago.

East central Wisconsin remains the only region that’s not abnormally dry or worse. Northwest and far southern areas continue to be in a severe drought. The reports are based on conditions from Tuesday – and quite a bit of snow has melted since then, so it will be interesting to see how the seepage affects the dry conditions underground.

Meanwhile the U-S Agriculture and Commerce departments have entered into an agreement to improve their drought forecasting and data-sharing efforts. The need for improvements was brought up in a series of regional conferences on the drought.