Drought expands significantly across Minnesota

 While a few lucky spots have received rain, most of Minnesota has been very dry this September. This has allowed abnormally dry and moderate drought conditions to expand.

Drought conditions have expanded in Minnesota 

Wow. Who would have thought a month ago we’d be talking about drought? Abnormally dry and moderate drought conditions really expanded in the past seven days. 80 percent of Minnesota is now abnormally dry, up from 50 percent a week ago. Moderate drought also expanded from just 2 percent of the state in solely southwest Minnesota to now 16 percent of the state, including much of northeast Minnesota. 

A few lucky locations got some rainfall last week thanks to some random clusters of thunderstorms. For example, Hibbing has seen over 2 inches of rainfall this month but Duluth has only had a few tenths of an inch. Most of the rain that fell last week was in swaths of southeast Minnesota. 

Most of the state is behind by 1 to 3 inches of rain over the past 30 days. The warm, sunny weather has also helped to dry out soil conditions. 

There’s no rain of significance in sight. The 6 to 10 day and 8 to 14 day outlooks call for continued high odds of below normal rainfall.