Interesting question about why the news never mentions it. The powers that be do not want us thinking about it or asking questions.
I've posted about it elsewhere. Parts of Ohio are pretty ok right now and some of the area right next to the Lake is actually ahead on rainfall. But where I am in Cincinnati, we are still in Severe Drought. We went from warm drought in spring to hot drought in summer to cold drought. But dry....
Incidentally very nice website. Where you wrote Indiana Interactive USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, I just substituted Ohio and it came right up. The home page is
www.plantmaps.com From there it has a left side menu listing all the states and some Canadian provinces. You can go to your own state and it has tons of info, including distribution of a lot of different native plants, information about the different eco-regions in your state, etc. I found a couple different drought maps of Ohio and different Ohio cities, but I never found where you got the Palmer index and the number of inches needed to catch up.