Southeast Nebraska has dodged the worst of the state's drought dilemmas over the last five years, but it appears to be headed toward the hot seat this summer.

The leaves were curling Thursday on Dave Deerson's drought-stressed corn near Mead.

The town of Western, 55 miles southwest of Lincoln, has just joined York and Seward in imposing watering restrictions to compensate for low well levels.

And the latest drought monitor map, issued Thursday by a consortium that includes the Lincoln-based National Drought Mitigation Center, puts an eastern block of Nebraskan counties bounded by Kansas, Iowa and the Platte River in code yellow.

That means abnormally dry.

Deerson, whose farm is a few miles east of Wahoo in Saunders County, expects things to get worse before they get better.

As he spoke, temperatures were topping 90 degrees, south winds were blowing, and corn without access to irrigation was reaching its critical tasseling stage.

"If it would rain right away, it would probably be OK," Deerson said of his corn. "But it's not going to happen, it doesn't look like."

Deerson can irrigate about 50 percent of his acres, although heavy pumping isn't very appealing either at a time when diesel fuel prices are almost twice as high as a year ago.

But the more immediate source of concern is the unirrigated portion of Nebraska's corn crop, grown largely in the state's southeast corner.

That was the one reporting district, among eight in the state, that entered the week with below-normal precipitation, according to the Nebraska Agricultural Statistics Service, and hot, dry conditions ahead.

State Climatologist Al Dutcher and Drew Lyon, a University of Nebraska dryland crop specialist at Scottsbluff, filled in more of the troublesome details that accompany Thursday's drought monitor map.

"Lack of moisture at this time will have a significant impact on grain yield," Lyon said of corn.

Dutcher said Lincoln is about 3.5 inches below normal precipitation for the year. That's about 81 percent of normal, as of July 1, and it's the city's second-worst showing for the date in the last five years.

Do those numbers suggest a reversal of fortune in precipitation, west to east?

"That is a flip, to some extent, from what we have been seeing," he said.

Agriculture is not the only sufferer in dry times. Western and its population of about 280 have just been added to the state's list of towns restricting water use because of declining well levels.

Town Board Member Tom Murphy said a drop of about 5 feet in two wells between May 15 and the end of June signals the start of irrigation season and the depleting effects of agricultural pumping.

The town will have to reach out two or more miles to tap the more ample water resources that will solve a problem that has gotten worse over the last two decades, Murphy said. Piping water in will cost about $80,000 per mile.

Depending on the weather in the rest of July and August, the list of cities restricting water use could get a lot longer than the current six. In 2002, another forgettable year for summer rainfall totals, it grew to 26 by Aug. 20.

From here forward, said the University of Nebraska's Lyon, there is about a six-week window that will make or break the corn crop.

"The key period for grain development in the corn plant is tasseling time and early grain fill," he said.

"It's going to get bad," Mead farmer Deerson said, "if the 90s keep up and there's no rain."

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.