Rainy weather good for Minn. groundwater

While Thursday's cold, wet forecast is bad news for people looking forward to nice spring weather, it is good news for our groundwater resources.

MPR News' Cathy Wurzer spoke with Jason Moeckel of the Department of Natural Resources Division of Ecological and Water Resources, about how a week of rainy days affects the water level in our underground aquifers.

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Areas of central Minnesota saw more than 6 inches of rain last month. It's early enough in the season that plants aren't absorbing that water, so much of it is recharging aquifers.

"What we've seen this year has been tremendous," said Moeckel, who oversees the DNR's monitoring and analysis of groundwater.

The April snow really saturated the top layer of the soil, which means that now the rain that we've been getting that's been coming down so slowly, really sort of medium intensity, but for a long number of days means that a lot of that moisture can actually penetrate down past the root zone of all the plants and get down into our aquifers and help with the recharge.

Moeckel cautioned that it didn't rain as much in southwest Minnesota, the driest part of the state.

Increased groundwater pumping by farms and cities have put extra stress on aquifers in some parts of Minnesota, and state officials are monitoring the situation to ensure groundwater use is sustainable.

The DNR should know later this summer how much aquifers have been recharged, he added.