This spring has not seen much in the way of significant rainfall events. The lack of thunderstorms and severe weather mostly explains why as intense rainfall rates have been difficult to come by. The result is a worsening drought condition for much of the state. The featured chart attempts to break down why places like Des Moines are below average for year to date precipitation. The daily precipitation over its observational record is broken into equal volume bins such that, on average, each bin provides about 20% of the year to date total rainfall each year. The number of days within those bins is shown for this year and the average. The red percentage numbers represent the precipitation departure (in percentage points) this year. So this year's deficit can be explained by not having any heavy rainfall events over 1.22+ inches and a smaller decrease in the number of events in the 0.47-0.76" inch range.

Voting:
Good = 8
Bad = 1
Abstain = 1