The U.S. Drought Monitor's most recent map shows nearly all of Nebraska remains in extreme or exceptional drought.
The latest map, released Thursday, shows slightly more than 97 percent of the state in extreme drought, a slight decrease from last week's 98.30 percent in extreme drought.
However, the map shows exceptional drought expanded slightly in Nebraska over the last week, from 22.53 percent of the state to 23.33 percent as of Tuesday morning.
Thanks to rain last weekend, the amount of Iowa in the two worst drought classifications fell by 9 percentage points to 58.3 percent.
Nebraska is missing out on the rain brought by Hurricane Isaac, which made landfall Monday on the Gulf Coast and is crawling north and east. The system brought heavy rains to drought-parched Arkansas on Thursday, and could move into Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio as early as Friday, dumping as much as 12 inches of rain.
