What a difference a year makes.

Last April, drought conditions had some docks at Perry Lake’s marina laying across a dry, cracked lake bed. A year later, the situation is nearly back to normal.

“Right now we’re sitting pretty good, we’re pretty happy,” said Bryan Bedigrew, the marina’s business coordinator.

The lake’s water levels, in fact, are back to within a foot of where they should be, Bedigrew said. Last year the water level was six or seven feet lower than it is today.

And last year Douglas County’s farmers were among those in 92 of the state’s 105 counties who could apply for drought disaster loans.

But now Lawrence and most of eastern Kansas are no longer in a drought, weather and climate experts say. Last year’s scorched farm fields are recovering.

“Late-winter and early spring rains have done well,” said Darren Hibdon, K-State Research and Extension agricultural agent for Franklin County. “You can see the wheat really starting to take off and grow.”

Pastures and hay grass fields also show promise, and farm ponds are full, Hibdon said. Last month most of Franklin County was on the receiving end of a 5-inch rain storm, which helped to break drought conditions.

“Corn planting should start soon,” Hibdon said. “We should have a good grow year. We’re off to a good start.”

Bryan Sadder, of Independence, Mo., fishes at Perry Lake. Thanks in part to 3.71 inches of rain this month, drought has disappeared from Lawrence, as well as much of eastern Kansas. Sadder was at the lake Thursday.

Through noon Sunday, Lawrence had picked up 3.71 inches of moisture during March, including .71 of an inch of rain Saturday. That brings the city’s official moisture total to 5.82 inches for the year, said 6News weather forecaster Ross Janssen. The year-to-date total is about an inch and a half more than the normal 4.48 inches. Last year only 2.65 inches of precipitation had fallen for the year at this time, records showed.

But while eastern Kansas is heading into the growing and lake recreation season in good shape, the situation in western Kansas still is grim, said Mary Knapp, climatologist and director of the Kansas Weather Data Library at Kansas State University.

“You don’t have to go very far west before finding drought conditions,” she said.

Western Kansas reservoirs are several feet below normal levels, Knapp said, and Webster Reservoir in Rooks County is 19 feet below normal.

“They (western Kansans) didn’t get the moisture in the winter like the eastern part of the state did,” she said.

Some parts of western Kansas could see drought conditions get even worse. The National Weather Service’s U.S. Seasonal Outlook map shows the drought continuing in southwestern Kansas, including Liberal. The outlook for northwestern Kansas was expected to improve slightly, but now even that improvement is in doubt, Knapp said.

“The drought outlook actually isn’t looking as good now as it was earlier in the spring,” Knapp said.

There also is a small area in extreme northeastern Kansas, which includes Brown County and extends into the St. Joseph, Mo., area, where severe drought persists, Knapp said. As for the Douglas County area, it is still unclear whether the drought will return anytime soon.

“This is the time of year when we are supposed to be getting rain, so it needs to continue,” Knapp said. It wouldn’t take a long of stretch of dry weather to get the area back into the condition it had last year.