Check the current U.S. Drought Monitor severity level for a job's county before scheduling a water-intensive pressure-washing job, to flag likely local water-use restrictions
domain: usdmdataservices.unl.edu · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Identify the job site's county and its five-digit FIPS code, or the two-letter state abbreviation for a state-wide pull.
Build a request to https://usdmdataservices.unl.edu/api/CountyStatistics/GetDroughtSeverityStatisticsByArea with aoi set to the county FIPS code, a startdate/enddate range in M/D/YYYY format, and statisticsType=1.
Set the Accept header to application/json, since the service defaults to CSV otherwise, and send the GET request.
Parse the returned weekly None/D0-D4 drought-category values to see the county's current drought severity.
If the county shows D2 (Severe) or worse, flag the job for a client conversation about water-use expectations before scheduling.
Known gotchas
The API reports drought severity classifications only; it does not know about specific local water-restriction ordinances, so pair it with a check of the county/utility's actual rules.
Data is updated weekly (Thursdays); don't expect intraday changes to be reflected.
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