@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 1857+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.

Tools

• us_drought_national(area?, measure?, start_date?, end_date?) — national 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?"

• us_drought_state(state, measure?, start_date?, end_date?) — drought statistics for one state or territory, given by name, postal abbreviation, or 2-digit FIPS code.

• us_drought_county(state?, county?, fips?, measure?, start_date?, end_date?) — drought statistics for one county, matched by state + county name or by 5-digit FIPS code.

All three categories are cumulative, which is the Drought Monitor's own convention: d1_pct 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 start_date/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 map_date, valid_start, valid_end, and data_as_of so a caller never has to guess which week a figure belongs to.

Related MCP server: mcp-usgs-water-data

Auth

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

Data sources

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

Notes

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

• An area/state/county with no map in the requested window comes back from the upstream as an empty (but successful) result — the tools report that as found: false with a reason, not a thrown error.

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 — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, 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.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1857+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/us_drought_national \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"area":"conus"}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/us_drought_national. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Run it from npm

@pipeworx/mcp-us-drought-monitor is a local stdio bridge to the Pipeworx gateway: your MCP client starts it with npx, and it forwards every call to the same https://gateway.pipeworx.io/us-drought-monitor/mcp endpoint shown above. It needs network access; there is no offline mode.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "us-drought-monitor": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-us-drought-monitor"]
    }
  }
}

Without a key it calls anonymously, capped at 50 calls a day. A free account raises that to 200 a day: get a key at https://pipeworx.io/signup and add "env": { "PIPEWORX_API_KEY": "<your key>" } to the server entry. The key is sent as a Bearer token, the same way a hosted connection sends it, so calls are metered and billed exactly as they are there.

It lists only this pack's tools by default. Set PIPEWORX_META_TOOLS=1 to also list ask_pipeworx and the other gateway-wide tools.

Behind an HTTPS proxy: Node's built-in fetch does not read HTTPS_PROXY by default. Newer Node releases honour it when NODE_USE_ENV_PROXY=1 is set; check your Node version's documentation.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Us Drought Monitor data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides

• pipeworx.io

License

MIT