Drought is a complex interaction of short and long term precipitation deficits producing impacts on various time scales as well. If you consider the past 365 day precipitation departure, Iowa is about 6.5 inches below average currently. How soon can this deficit be made up? The featured image considers the scenarios provided by the previous 119 years of climate record when appended onto our current condition. The lines trace out the 365 day departure to date. When considering this long term deficit, the chart clearly shows that no improvements will be made this winter season. Short term deficits could be eliminated though. More disturbing is that we will likely still be below normal to start the growing season as only six years shown provide a scenario were we even get to some level better than negative four inches.

Voting:
Good = 39
Bad = 11