DES MOINES, Iowa -- Widespread rain last week didn't do enough to ease Iowa's drought conditions.
"On average we got about three-quarters to eight-tenths of an inch of rain. We should have gotten more than an inch-and-a-tenth. Yes, it rained a lot but it didn't keep up with normal," says Iowa Department of Natural Resources Hydrology Resources Coordinator Tim Hall.
He says while Iowa didn't get enough rain last week to reduce drought conditions, the state caught a break of a different sort.
"We also had very cool weather, so on the other side of the coin--the evaporation and water use-side, we haven't seen as big of a demand for water," Hall says.
With crops in the ground, Hall says demand for water is going up in a state's that still pretty dry.
"Last year those corn and soybean acres had the advantage of being able to tap into moisture that was left over from 2019. We just didn't enter this year with a huge reserve of moisture in the tank," he says.
This week's National Drought Monitor Map shows 63 percent of the state abnormally dry or in some level of drought.
Image from the National Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln