Drought conditions in Iowa have worsened amid a lack of rainfall and a heat wave that stretched for days.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor for Iowa, based on precipitation(or lack thereof), through 7 am Tuesday, August 22nd, a large area of D3/extreme drought has developed in several northeast Iowa counties. That area includes the southeast corner of Floyd County, southwest corner of Chickasaw County, western half of Bremer County, eastern half of Butler County, northeast third of Grundy County, and the western two-thirds of Black Hawk County.Â
Remaining areas of those counties are rated in the D2/severe drought category. All of Mitchell, Howard, Fayette, Winneshiek, and Cerro Gordo counties, plus the vast majority of Franklin County and northeastern two-thirds of Worth County, are also experiencing severe drought conditions.
The extreme eastern section of Allamakee County, along the Mississippi River, is also now in that D3/extreme drought category, the second-worst classification of four the agency uses to denote drought conditions.
The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports, as a whole, the state is drier than it’s been in more than a month, as the state averaged less than a third than normal rainfall last week, combined with high temperatures that have hovered well-above 90 degrees since last weekend.
The federal Climate Prediction Center predicts that a similar dryness will persist in the state for the next two months.
About 47% of the state’s topsoil had sufficient moisture for growing crops as of Sunday, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture
