Northwest Iowa — We’ve had scattered rain showers, but as a whole, it’s still pretty dry in northwest Iowa. And it’s drier the further south you go, up to a point.
According to the latest information from the US Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the area of extreme drought in Plymouth, Cherokee, and Woodbury counties hasn’t changed much. It still involves all but the very northern tier of Plymouth County, basically the northwest half of Woodbury County, and nearly the west half of Cherokee County, and extends across the Big Sioux River into South Dakota, and across the Missouri River into Nebraska.
The latest map does look fairly similar to the previous week’s. The only movement to speak of in northwest Iowa is the area of moderate drought that extended basically south of the Lyon and Sioux County line to about halfway down Sioux County, where it turns into severe drought. That area of moderate drought now extends well into Lyon County, and covers almost the entire northwest half of Lyon County now.
Osceola County looks to be faring the best up here, with just an area of abnormally dry conditions in the southern part of the county. O’Brien County has three different levels, with abnormally dry in the north, moderate drought in the central, and severe drought in the south.
Elsewhere in the state, the abnormally dry area along the Mississippi in the far-eastern “bump” of the state has all but disappeared. But there’s a new moderate drought area appearing in southeast Iowa and the two areas of abnormally dry conditions in the southeast and southwest are now connected via a narrow strip in the south-central part of the state.
