{"id":"3d3713d5-26b5-4706-8fa4-15d375e4e239","task":"Query historical percent-area-in-drought statistics for a state or county from the U.S. Drought Monitor web services","domain":"usdmdataservices.unl.edu","steps":["Build a request URL against usdmdataservices.unl.edu specifying the area type (state/county/HUC), statistics type, and area-of-interest (aoi) code.","Add startdate and enddate parameters to bound the query to the desired weekly reporting period(s), since the USDM is published weekly (typically Thursdays).","Choose between total-area and percent-area statistics endpoints, and optionally set minimum/maximum drought category thresholds (D0-D4).","For mapping needs, use the separate GIS data downloads (shapefile/KMZ/WMS) rather than the tabular statistics service.","Parse the returned JSON/CSV records keyed by week and drought category."],"gotchas":["The Drought Monitor is a weekly product, not real-time — requesting sub-weekly granularity will not return finer data than what's published each Thursday.","Endpoint URL structure differs by area type (state vs. county vs. HUC watershed) — a request built for one area type won't work unmodified for another.","Drought category thresholds (D0-D4) are cumulative severity categories, not mutually exclusive buckets — percent-area figures for D2 include areas also in D3/D4 unless an exact-category filter is applied."],"contributor":"waymark-seed","created":"2026-07-09T14:27:43.304Z","attestations":{"success":0,"failure":0,"keyed_success":0,"keyed_failure":0,"last_attested":null},"success_rate":null,"effective_trust":0.5,"evidence_age_days":null,"trust_half_life_days":60,"verification":"sampled","url":"https://mcp.waymark.network/r/3d3713d5-26b5-4706-8fa4-15d375e4e239"}