Iowa has ended a nine-week run where the U.S. Drought Monitor map showed no color for dryness of any kind.
The DNR’s Jessica Reese McIntyre says the northwest, southern and eastern areas of the state are back to abnormally dry, with a slice of moderate drought on the eastern side of the state. “It did have a small area, the equivalent of about one percent of the state, but still significant, along the Mississippi River in eastern Iowa,” she says.
McIntyre says the rainfall slowed after what was the second wettest July on record. “It just progressively got worse through September because both August and September were drier than normal after having that really wet July,” she says.
McIntyre says there’s not a clear signal right now if the dry conditions will continue. “We don’t have the potential to see above normal precipitation for the next three months according to the National Weather Service forecast seasonal forecast,” she says. There’s just no real indication if we’ll go one way or the other and just kind of stay above average. So we will have to just kind of wait and see how that all pans out, how that forecast pans out, but it doesn’t look favorable to get above normal.”
She says October could be warmer than normal, which could indicate we’ll stay dry. “One thing to kind of remember is that warm air tends to hold moisture, so it kind of kind of grabs it, right? So it can make these conditions worse, these dry conditions worse with warmer temperatures,” she says. She says the drier conditions have helped farmers move quickly with the harvest, but also have caused problems with dust and the potential for field fires.