Storms start to move out of Minnesota, continue for western Wisconsin

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Our wetter spring across much of southeast and northeast Minnesota has eased drought in parts of our state. 

 shows drought coverage in Minnesota dropped to just 22 percent from 46 percent coverage last week. A new update will arrive Thursday morning.

The areas with the biggest drought improvement are in northern Minnesota between the Mississippi headwaters region and St. Louis County between Duluth and Ely. Severe drought drought around the Mississippi River headwaters and parts of Cass County is gone with just moderate drought in those areas.

And moderate drought has been knocked back to abnormally dry across St. Louis County.

Much of northern and southeastern Minnesota picked up between 2 and 5 inches of rain over the past 30 days. 

The forecast for the next one to two weeks looks very dry again across Minnesota. Forecast models like this European model output show very little rain over at least the next week:

There are signs of some moisture later next week.

Paul Huttner

Author

Several inches of rainfall over the past couple months has eased drought in parts of Minnesota. 

National Drought Mitigation Center

Observed precipitation over the past 30 days

Midwest Regional Climate Center.

European (ECMWF) model precipitation output

Drought conditions improving across northern Minnesota

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