Iowa State Climatologist Dr. Justin Glisan says that while the melting snowpack won’t provide a lot of precipitation for the already existing dry conditions in the western part of the state, anything is better than nothing and farmers will definitely take what they can get.

“If we look at these subsoil moisture percentiles,” Glisan said, “think of a sponge. One hundred percent would be soaked. We are at the 30th or below percentile. That’s pretty dry soils in western Iowa. We’ve had less than six months of slightly above average precipitation. With this snowpack melting, the snow water equivalent within that snowpack is anywhere from 2-4 inches. That’s not a lot of moisture given the extent of the snowpack, but this will help get some moisture down into the first few inches of that topsoil.”

The western half of the state continues to see slight improvements week-to-week on the U.S. Drought Monitor, says Glisan. The Drought Monitor released Thursday morning shows many counties have been taken out of the “moderate” drought category and have been downgraded to “abnormally dry.”

“We started off with the coldest first half of February on record,” Glisan said. “Prior to that it was 1936 and 1899. We had that arctic air outbreak across much of the central part of the United States stretching all the way down to Texas with those frigid temperatures over a span of anywhere from 7-to-11 days. We had also been in a more active storm track, so we had seen pretty good accumulations of snow, especially in northern and eastern Iowa.”

Moving forward into spring planting season, Glisan says much of Iowa will still need regular rainfalls in March and April to help further improve subsoil conditions. May and June are typically the wettest two months of the year for Iowa.