Statewide Iowa — The latest update from the state finds the amount of precipitation in the “Water Year” for the state is well above normal.
The DNR’s Tim Hall says the Water Year runs from Iowa from October of last year to the end of September this year.
The current water year saw a little more than 42-and-a-half inches of precipitation.
The ground is full of water right now, and that can be a positive.
But he says if the ground stays saturated and we have a wet spring the wet soil profile can become a bad thing.
Hall says it’s a waiting game that depends on how much snow we get — and how much remains in the spring when it starts to melt.
Wet ground delayed planting this last spring and that led to a delayed harvest for this year’s crop. This was the seventh wettest and 45th warmest Water Year among 147 years of Iowa records. The back-to-back water years of 2018 and 2019 was the third wettest combined two years on record.
