Us Drought Monitor MCP server

@pipeworx/us-drought-monitor

Weekly U.S. drought-severity statistics — percent of area and percent of population in categories None, D0 (abnormally dry) through D4 (exceptional drought) — for the nation, each state, and each county.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1819+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

drought statistics for the contiguous U.S. (conus), the contiguous states plus Alaska/Hawaii/Puerto Rico (total), or both at once (us). Answers "what percent of the contiguous US is in drought right now?"

• usdroughtnational(area?, measure?, startdate?, enddate?) — national

statistics for one state or territory, given by name, postal abbreviation, or 2-digit FIPS code.

• usdroughtstate(state, measure?, startdate?, enddate?) — drought

— drought statistics for one county, matched by state + county name or by 5-digit FIPS code.

• usdroughtcounty(state?, county?, fips?, measure?, startdate?, enddate?)

All three categories are cumulative, which is the Drought Monitor's own convention: d1pct means "at least D1" (D1 through D4 combined), not D1 alone. measure picks area (percent of land area, default) or population (percent of the area's population). Omit the date arguments for the latest published map; pass startdate/end_date (YYYY-MM-DD or M/D/YYYY) for a range of weekly maps.

The map is valid every Tuesday and the Center releases it the following Thursday — every response carries mapdate, validstart, validend, and dataas_of so a caller never has to guess which week a figure belongs to.

Auth

Keyless. The upstream data service has no registration or key requirement.

Data sources

the USDA and NOAA — the U.S. Drought Monitor's weekly drought-severity statistics (comprehensive area and population percent by category, for the nation, states, and counties).

• National Drought Mitigation Center (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), with

Notes

returns for a state (rather than carrying a ~3,100-row FIPS table in the pack), so a county name that exists in more than one form (e.g. "St. Louis" vs. "St. Louis City") should be disambiguated with the 5-digit fips argument if the name match is ambiguous.

• Counties are matched by name against the full county list the publisher

the upstream as an empty (but successful) result — the tools report that as found: false with a reason, not a thrown error.

• An area/state/county with no map in the requested window comes back from

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "us-drought-monitor": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/us-drought-monitor/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/us-drought-monitor/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — askpipeworx, discovertools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.