Lincoln, Nebraska — The latest Iowa Drought Monitor shows drought conditions have worsened in Iowa.
State Climatologist Justin Glisan says there’s been an 18 percent increase in extreme drought conditions since last week’s report.
There’s a persistent area of extreme drought in southeast Iowa as well. Some farmers have begun chopping corn for silage because most leaves on the stalks have died.
Small sections of Fremont and Ringgold Counties are the only areas of Iowa considered to be drought-free and Glisan says nearly 99-and-a-half percent of the entire state is now in some level of drought. The USDA began issuing Drought Monitor reports 23 years ago.
Those two drought years were more intense because of particularly warm temperatures in the upper Midwest, according to Glisan. Glisan says the statewide average rainfall is about three and a quarter inches in August — about an inch below normal, but Glisan says there’s wide variation in sections of the state.
The southern two tiers of Iowa got an average amount of rainfall during the past month.
Here in northwest Iowa, conditions are unchanged from last week. There is still a small strip of severe drought in far northwest Lyon County. There’s a fairly wide strip of “abnormally dry” area from the Hawarden area northeast, just barely covering Sheldon and about the northern half of O’Brien County, as well as all of Osceola County except the northwest corner area around Sibley. The balance of the four-county area remains in moderate drought.
