U.S. drought continues to retreat after snows, rain -report

March 28 (Reuters) - Recent snow storms and rainfall have helped diminish drought in the U.S. Plains and other parched areas of the United States, according to a report issued on Thursday. Eight states continued to have some areas suffering from the worst level of drought, dubbed "exceptional" by the Drought Monitor, a report issued by a consortium of state and federal climatologists each week. But those areas were shrinking. According to this week's report:

* The High Plains region, the area hit the hardest by drought, showed that exceptional drought fell to 22.24 percent of the region for the week that ended March 26, down from 24.37 percent in the prior week. The second-worst drought level, "extreme," gripped 54.82 percent, down from 55.52 percent; and the third-worst level of drought, "severe," had a hold on 81.30 percent of the region, but that was down from 81.46 percent the prior week, the report said.

* Kansas, the top U.S. wheat-growing state, saw good improvement in drought conditions, as did neighboring Colorado.

* The nation's most drought-stricken state, Nebraska, also saw slight improvement, but still more than 96 percent of the state was rated in extreme drought and more than 76 percent was rated in exceptional drought.

* Oklahoma and Texas both saw drought levels grow slightly worse in the prior week, but conditions are still vastly improved from the last several months. Oklahoma this week has 9.90 percent of its land area rated in exceptional drought, up from 9.71 percent, and 10.54 percent of Texas was rated in exceptional drought, 9.88 percent more than the prior week.

* Overall, for the contiguous United States, "severe" or worse levels of drought slipped to 35.19 percent from 35.45 percent over the last week.

(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)