About 78% of the state has some measure of drought. (Courtesy of U.S. Drought Monitor)
Drought conditions in western parts of Iowa improved in the past week, but dryness statewide is still worse than it was two weeks ago despite some abundant rainfall, according to a U.S. Drought Monitor report on Thursday.
About 78% of the state was suffering from some degree of drought as of Tuesday morning. That’s an improvement from 83% a week ago.
The gains were made mostly in southwest Iowa, where wide areas had rain of 3 inches or more last week, according to the Midwestern Regional Climate Center. Those rains also helped alleviate severe and extreme drought in south-central Iowa.
An area south of Sioux City that has long been plagued with the worst of the state’s drought also improved.
Conditions elsewhere were largely unchanged. There was little or no rain last week in broad swaths of northeast Iowa.
About 59% of the state’s cropland is short or very short of topsoil moisture, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report on Monday.
There has been drought in parts of the state consistently since July 2020.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.
