(KIWA Staff Photo)
Northwest Iowa — It’s not just you. If you’ve noticed your grass or crops are in need of a drink, you’re not wrong. Northwest Iowa has been a little dry for a while, but the latest US Drought Monitor report says it’s worse than that. Some of our area is now actually in official drought conditions again.
The US Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln shows in its latest Iowa report that an area of what it calls “moderate drought” has slipped into the far southern part of O’Brien County. It goes a little further north in the southeastern corner of the county and flattens as you go west. It also clips the far southeastern part of Sioux County. Elsewhere in our area, the moderate drought covers very nearly all of Plymouth County, and all of Cherokee and Buena Vista counties before moving out of our area. However, there is just a little sliver in the far northeastern part of Dickinson County as well. Most of that area was listed as merely “abnormally dry” last week.
As for the rest of the state, most of the dry and drought area is in the northwest half of the state, with little pockets in southeast, southwest, and far east-central Iowa. Otherwise the rest of the state is drought-free.
The good news is that northwest Iowa is currently in an area that could very well see rain for the next little while. It’s not known how much it will help, however.
