Iowa state climatologist Dr. Justin Glisan tells the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network that parts of northwest Iowa benefited from some timely rain showers over the last seven days. Northwest Iowa is the only part of the state experiencing D3 drought conditions.

“We did see some improvement in that northwestern D3 core that was introduced last week,” Glisan said. “As a reminder, D3 is extreme drought. That’s where we see precipitation deficits going back six to eight months. We saw a swath up there in the northwest corner of anywhere from 2-to-2 ½ inches of rainfall. That’s really good especially this time of the year. Weekly totals generally are six tenths to seven tenths of an inch, so when you get those two-plus inch totals, that will put a dent in a drought condition.”

The majority of western Iowa is still in the D2 category with not much change from last week. Glisan says some areas in southeast Iowa have been dry of late.

“We did see a slight degradation in southeastern Iowa with some D0, or abnormally dry, conditions,” Glisan said. “That’s not drought, but abnormal dryness. It was introduced down there about four percent. That’s where we’re seeing some dryer conditions start to develop. We had some widespread rainfall over the past two weeks, but we do miss little swaths of the state and that’s when we do see the introduction of that D0.”

Glisan notes that farmers have had a good couple of weeks to get crops out.

“We’re about three weeks ahead of where we were last year and 9-10 days ahead of the five-year average,” Glisan said. “We’ve seen really great weather conditions for farmers.”

Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network.