(Des Moines)– November is going into the record books as one of the driest months ever in Iowa. That word from Tim Hall of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources…
“November typically brings us two inches of rain across the state. That would have been nice to have but in the end less than four tenths-of-an-inch of rain statewide average. There were a couple of locations in the state that got essentially zero rain in the entire month.”
The Iowa Great Lakes Area was among them. Only two one-hundredths of-an-inch of rain fell for the entire month of November at the KUOO studios. Hall says that scant amount of rain for an entire month is extremely rare…
“You would expect a couple of systems to roll through and at least drop a couple of tenths of an inch of rain, but to go an entire 30 days with barely a trace is just a phenomenally dry month.”
Hall says the state is running out of time to lock in some soil moisture before the ground freezes…
“There’s very little evaporation or water use going on right now with soil moisture, so anything we can stick in the ground before it freezes will be there for us in the spring.”
Fortunately, the month of October was relatively wet locally, with nearly 6 inches of rain recorded at the KUOO studios.
