Our recent weather has been quite wet with both rain and snow bringing much needed moisture to the state. An ongoing question is how much impact this wet weather has had on the drought situation for Iowa. The featured chart presents the combination of trailing 91, 182, and 365 day precipitation departures for Ames along with the coincident US Drought Monitor classification. This week has seen an inch plus of rainfall for Ames, which is exceptional for the winter season and produced a noticeable impact to the 91 day departures, but the 181 day departure remains about unchanged. This is the problem with drought busting during the winter season as rainfall amounts are generally not enough to erase departures that accumulated during what should have been the wettest time of year. While a daily inch of rain during January is exceptional, it just erases a single dry week or two during August. There is also the issue of where all this rainfall went with frozen soils likely leading to most of it running off, but the drought monitor also considers reservoir levels and streamflows, which have certainly been helped by the recent wet weather.

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