Rains provided just spotty drought relief for the Midwest and Northern Plains

Rains over the past week did not bring near the relief hoped for in the Northern Plains and western Corn Belt. Today’s National Drought Monitor for the week ending Aug. 10 notes that interior Wisconsin received heavy rains, but rainfall exceeding an inch was relatively limited elsewhere. “The scattered areas of heavy rain included northeastern and part of southern North Dakota, northeastern South Dakota, a few areas from central Minnesota southward into central Iowa and southeastern Nebraska. Similarly, widely-scattered areas of 1 to locally 3 inches dotted the Midwest, lower Ohio Valley, central and southern Appalachians, and northern New England,” today’s drought summary says.

Consequently, dry areas of the western Great lakes saw significant improvement, but drought improvement outside of that was limited to small, scattered areas. “Increased drought coverage and intensity was more common, as a large majority of these areas recorded light precipitation at best,” today’s summary says.

Today’s writeup said it was “feast or famine” across the Midwest with heavy rains bringing a broken pattern of improving conditions in southern Minnesota, northern and central Iowa and southern Wisconsin. Of note, D4 drought was introduced in northern Minnesota for the first time on record. For Iowa, the area covered by abnormal dryness or drought edged a little over a point higher to 76%. Dryness expanded in some areas of Missouri, Michigan and Ohio, but nothing intense.