The weekly US Drought Monitor was released yesterday and depicts a worsening drought situation in the state. While heavy rains frequented the state in October, we have turned very dry again. The featured chart presents the combination of trailing day precipitation departures expressed in terms of standard deviations from long term averages for Osceola (just south of Des Moines). The shaded areas represent the US Drought Monitor conditions analyzed for the location. This area was particularly hard hit this year and while the heavy rains in October did remove the D3 category, the area has remained in D2 since. There is no one magic metric that determines the drought category, but a number of metrics are considered and local reported impacts.

Voting:
Good = 14
Bad = 3
Abstain = 3

Tags:   usdm