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Morning Edition
Cathy Wurzer and Gracie Stockton

Every drop counts: Recent rain, snowfall making a dent in lingering drought

03262024.MPR.Snow
Cars parked along 27th Avenue West are covered in snow on Tuesday in the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Duluth. Duluth is under a winter storm warning experiencing record-level snowfall of around 15 inches and over as of Tuesday morning.
Erica Dischino for MPR News

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The season’s biggest snowstorm is not done yet, with more snow, sleet and freezing rain pounding Minnesota on Tuesday and nearly 17 inches of snowfall dropping on Two Harbors.

The liquid equivalent of the snow at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was 1.79 inches as of Tuesday morning; Rochester reached 2 inches. The most recent U.S. Drought Monitor showed nearly 75 percent of the state under at least moderate drought conditions.

So is this big bout of precipitation enough to alleviate lingering dryness? State Climatologist Luigi Romolo says it’s made “a significant dent” — particularly around the seven-county Twin Cities metro — though areas of severe drought near the headwaters of the Mississippi likely won’t see much change.

“But every drop that we’ve gotten has been beneficial,” Romolo said. “It would be interesting to see how much of a bump we get in our lakes and rivers when this fresh, new snow begins to melt and runoff.”

The warmer winter and lack of ground freeze means more water is making it into the topsoil, but Romolo says the moisture seeping deeper is critical to lessening drought.

Whether Minnesota will get more moisture soon remains a bit of a mystery.

“It’s still kind of a coin flip at this point,” Romolo said. “We really don’t have a good idea. Hopefully, it’ll land on the wet side of the coin.”

Unlike most years, rivers aren’t on the rise right now due to minimal snowfall. With that, major flooding isn’t in the forecast, according to Romolo.

“We’ve had three years of drought,” Romolo said. “And it’s going to take at least a good year or two of non-drought kind of climatology for that to really rebound.”