After all of the heavy rainfall events of these past four years, it is hard to imagine having drought conditions in Iowa. The featured chart presents a time series of the areal coverage of various drought categories in the state from the National Drought Monitor. The chart shows conditions recently getting both better and worse (two arrows) with the total area under drought shrinking while the area in severe drought condition expanding. This implies that recent precipitation events have missed the hardest hit areas. These areas are in northwest and northcentral Iowa. The near term forecast does not have much hope for large precipitation events.

Voting:
Good = 20
Bad = 3

Tags:   drought   2011  

The current analysis of drought severity in the state has just over half of Iowa under abnormal or worse drought condition. The featured graph shows the history of drought category coverage over Iowa since the year 2000. The past 5 years have been relatively drought free with 2008 and 2010 being very wet years. The forecast does not have much in the way of rain chances for the next week as our dry weather continues.

Voting:
Good = 14
Bad = 4

Tags:   drought  

The US Drought Monitor has an area of abnormally dry and moderate drought analyzed in Western Iowa. This area has mostly missed the rainfall events in the past few months and is starting to show some agricultural impacts. The remants of Hurricane Gustav are providing rainfall in Eastern Iowa this morning and will slowly push off to the east.

Voting:
Good = 25
Bad = 4

Tags:   drought  

The featured plot highlights the change in the National Drought Monitor classification for the past 5 months. You can see that for the most part, last fall and winter has not been wet enough to recover from accumulated dryness in the state. The catch 22 is that a wet spring could erase some of these rainfall deficits, but would also delay spring planting due to wet fields. We will just have to be thankful for whatever rainfall we get this spring.

Voting:
Good = 27
Bad = 16

Tags:   drought  

The most recent release of the US Drought Monitor (shown on map) continues to indicate that much of Iowa is experiencing abnormally dry conditions with the driest areas in Southern and Southeastern Iowa. It would be really nice to have a handful of steady and soaking rains this spring before planting season arrives to replemish the soil, but who knows what mother nature has in store for us this spring.

Voting:
Good = 19
Bad = 17

Tags:   drought  

This weeks's drought monitor update continues to depict dry conditions over the entire state save Northcentral and Northwest Iowa. This time of year dryness is a good thing, since most farmers are looking to harvest the corns and need dry fields. The catch is that fall season rainfall can help to recharge moisture depleted soil preparing for the next growing season.

Voting:
Good = 15
Bad = 8

Tags:   drought