After all of the heavy rainfall events of these past four years, it is hard to imagine having drought conditions in Iowa. The featured chart presents a time series of the areal coverage of various drought categories in the state from the National Drought Monitor. The chart shows conditions recently getting both better and worse (two arrows) with the total area under drought shrinking while the area in severe drought condition expanding. This implies that recent precipitation events have missed the hardest hit areas. These areas are in northwest and northcentral Iowa. The near term forecast does not have much hope for large precipitation events.

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Tags:   drought   2011