Our soaking rains are easing drought across much of Minnesota
Another 1 to 3 inches through this morning. Drought Monitor shows a 1 class improvement.
There’s good news in this week’s U.S. Drought Monitor report for Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.
Most of central and southern Minnesota have soaked up heavy, multi-inch rainfall totals the past two weeks. Rainfall totals over the past 30 days show a broad area of 5 to 10 inches across southern and southeast Minnesota, northern Iowa and Wisconsin.
Less rain fell across northeast Minnesota, with the least rainfall unfortunately across the wildfire zones of northeast Minnesota.
That beneficial rain has pushed back drought by about 1 category across most of central and southern Minnesota over the past week. Some pockets of Minnesota have shown a 2-class improvement over the past month. Drought conditions have not changed overall in most of northern Minnesota.
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This week’s U.S. Drought Monitor shows drought conditions have been erased over most of Wisconsin and southeast Minnesota.
The Twin Cities metro area shows moderate drought and improvement from severe drought. Most of central and northern Minnesota still show severe to extreme drought, with a band of exceptional drought persisting in parts of northwest and north-central Minnesota.
Another 1 to 3 inches Thursday and Friday
Our most recent rainfall system produced another soaking rain for central and southern Minnesota. Rainfall of 1 to nearly 3 inches fell in western Minnesota.
Here’s a list of the highest observed rainfall totals in Minnesota over the past 24 hours.
Much of the Twin Cities picked up around an inch.
Here are some select rainfall totals for the Twin Cities area and greater Minnesota Thursday and Friday.
Oakdale 1.38”
St Paul 1.34”
Minneapolis 1.25”
Rochester 1.25”
Falcon Heights 1.19”
Roseville 1.13”
Minnetonka 1.10”
Austin 1.05”
East Grand Forks, Park Rapids 1.0”
MSP Airport .91”
Pillager .51”
Grand Rapids .16”
Ely .02”
We are slowly crawling out of the drought in parts of Minnesota. We’ll need several more inches of rain in northern Minnesota over the next few weeks to see significant improvement there.