KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The worst drought in decades is expected, over the next few months, to continue choking a large area of the Plains and Rockies that missed the soggy remnants of Hurricane Isaac, according to the National Weather Service’s Seasonal Drought Outlook released on Thursday morning.

But those lingering rain bands from the hurricane did provide welcome moisture to the Midwestern states that were previously the epicenter of the drought, soaking states like Missouri, Illinois and Indiana with two to six inches of rain, the Agriculture Department’s United States Drought Monitor reported also on Thursday morning. Most of Missouri has been downgraded from being in exceptional or extreme drought to being in severe drought. Almost all of Illinois and Indiana are now in the severe or moderate category.

But the drought’s severity was upgraded through much of the Central and Southern Plains — an area that stretches from southern South Dakota to northern Texas and has been suffering from triple-digit temperatures as well as lack of rain. Parts of South Dakota fell into exceptional drought, and that categorization expanded in large parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska as well.

Forecasters say that this region is moving to a climatologically drier time of the year, meaning that the drought will likely intensify in the coming months.