This toolkit from the National Drought Mitigation Center provides:

• Condition Monitoring Observations: Citizen scientists use a dry-to-wet scale to capture what they see at a specific place and time.
• Drought Impact Reporter: The Center systematically scans news stories, looking for "a loss or change at a specific place and time due to drought," providing a preliminary historic record and sometimes insight on emerging conditions.
• Visual Drought Atlas: A way to compare the appearance of different landscapes over time, in dry, wet, and normal years.

The site also provides a regularly updated list of sources of information on drought impacts or on other environmental conditions that may be related to drought and a repository of post-drought assessment reports.