A year into pandemic and with about everything turned upside down during this time, it is difficult, at least for me, to keep track of how the drought situation sits in the state. With the most recent US Drought Monitor update, a portion of northwestern Iowa remains at D3 (Extreme) drought classification. The featured map displays an IEM estimated analysis of climate district precipitation ranks over the past 365 days and shows a lot of variability over Iowa and the Midwest. There is even more variability that this map smooths out as averaging precipitation over such large areas dampens out the extremes. For example, a few point locations in northwestern Iowa are at the driest accumulation on record for this period of days. This is an important time of year for ground water recharge before the upcoming growing season and the near term forecast is not very optimistic for significant rains over the coming seven days.

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