Some parts of Iowa got more rain over the weekend than they did during the entire month of May, said Hall, who likened the effect of the 2 to 3 inches reported around Iowa to a teacher who calls a parent to inform them their straight-D student now is getting C grades.
“We would say that’s improvement but it’s not where we want to be yet,” he said. “It takes the edge off of some really critical situations that potentially could have developed. It buys us time to wait for some more rain so it’s great.”
“What we saw this weekend was just about perfect. It was decent rainfall that came over a fairly long period of time so we didn’t have flash flooding. So it was really good,” Hall added. “It’s going to build up the soil moisture, it’s going to build up the shallow groundwater, it’s going to build up the stream flow. But it’s going to be several months before we start to look back at the drought and say, ‘Well I’m glad that’s over.’”
But right now, he said, most of Iowa is at least 5 inches — if not 10 to 15 inches — behind for the last 18 months, and weekly rains averaging eight-tenths of an inch to 1.5 inches are needed in July, August and into September to get back to normal precipitation amounts of about 4 inches per month.
“If we get rainfall that’s normal to above normal throughout the balance of the summer into the fall, we could see a complete turnaround on drought conditions by the end of the fall,” Hall noted. “So it’s probably not going to be July, it’s probably not going to be August, it’s probably going to be September or October before we start to find ourselves on the other side of the drought issue.”
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Originally Appeared Here