For most of the state, rainfall amounts over the Memorial Day weekend were rather meager. Much of the state continues to "run on fumes", so to speak, after the wet April and heavy rains mid May. The featured chart shows the fickle rainfall story for Ames this May with the blue bars showing observed daily rainfall with the red bars indicating the month to date departure from average. The observed and climatological accumulation are plotted as well. Those aforementioned mid May rains are about all there is to speak of for Ames during May. The big rainfall on the 18th put the month-to-date departure barely above average and the departures are again grown since. The bad news is that the next week and perhaps even the next two weeks look very dry with warmer temperatures and reduced humidity, which will quickly escalate the drought situation during what should be the wettest portion of the year.