Latest Drought Monitor

The new U.S. Drought Monitor was released Thursday morning, and it doesn't deliver great news for eastern Iowa and western Illinois.  However, the states as a whole had a little relief within the last week.

Latest Drought Monitor, effective thru Oct. 8th

As you can see, much of the QCA is still classified under a "Severe Drought."  As a whole, Illinois' has improved quite a bit in the last week.  This week, 15.16% of the state is classified as no drought, while it was just 9.96% last week.  The percentage of areas under "Moderate Drought" have decreased from 30.67% last week to 22.86% this week.  Areas under "Severe Drought" have slightly decreased from 16.28% of Illinois last week, to just 16.01% this week.

As for Iowa, the changes aren't as dramatic, but there is still improvement.  Last week just 5.32% of the state had no drought, this week that has increased to 8.34%.  The percentage of "Moderate" and "Severe" droughts have also decreased within the last week.  The good news is that the area of exceptional drought has not increased since last week, staying the same at 1.76%.

There is some rain in the forecast this weekend, but that will not do much to help the drought situation.  Early indications show there are better chances for beneficial rain as we go into next week.  Here is the CPC's precipitation outlook for the 6 to 10 days:

CPC shows above average precip for the region.