# US Drought Monitor Severity by Area or Population

> US Drought Monitor Severity by Area or Population is a paid API for AI agents from fittings.sh, paid per call via x402, $0.00604/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Returns the percentage of a US state, county, or the whole nation in each drought severity category (D0–D4) by area or population for recent weekly maps.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://fittings.sh/v1/drought/severity
- Price: $0.00604/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/us-drought-monitor-severity-by-area-or-population-3d587d35
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_0FtdM_3uofSuRKyV5sRSo

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability us-drought-monitor-severity-by-area-or-population-3d587d35
```

Example prompt: What percentage of California is in each drought category right now — show me the last 4 weeks broken down by area rather than population.

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need structured, quantitative drought severity data for a specific US geography (state, county, or national) from the US Drought Monitor, especially when you need time-series comparisons across multiple weeks or need to differentiate impact by area vs. population. Prefer this over generic weather APIs when the specific question is about drought categories (D0–D4) rather than precipitation or temperature.

## Known failure modes

- Invalid or unrecognized state postal code returns an error or empty result
- County FIPS code not found or malformed returns an error
- Weeks parameter out of range (>52 or <1) may return validation error
- Drought data may lag real-time conditions by days due to weekly map publication schedule
- Omitting required fields like type may cause unexpected default behavior

## How this service works

Percent of a US state, county or the nation in each US Drought Monitor category D0 to D4, by area or by population, for a recent run of weekly maps.

## Output

A time series of weekly drought maps for the requested geography (nation, state, or county), with each map showing the percentage in each drought category (D0–D4), either cumulatively or categorically, measured by area or population. Returns multiple weeks of data up to the requested count (default 8, max 52).

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [],
     "properties": {
      "type": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "'cumulative' or 'categorical', default cumulative"
      },
      "basis": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "'area' or 'population', default area"
      },
      "state": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "US state or territory postal code or name. Omit for the whole US."
      },
      "weeks": {
       "type": "number",
       "description": "Weekly maps to return, 1-52, default 8"
      },
      "county": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Five-digit county FIPS code, e.g. 48201. Takes precedence over state."
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/us-drought-monitor-severity-by-area-or-population-3d587d35/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from fittings.sh](https://www.zero.xyz/host/fittings.sh/llms.txt)