The latest drought monitor shows almost no change in the drought despite the recent rains. Moderate drought actually expanded from about 34% of Minnesota to now 39% while severe drought areas in central Minnesota and around Duluth remained at 5% of the state. Almost all of Minnesota, fully 92% is abnormally dry at a minimum.
While rainfalls over the past week have been beneficial, it’s not enough to bust a drought in the middle of the hottest time of year with the most intense sun of the year while temperatures are some of the hottest we’ve ever seen. Last weekend’s rainfall was the most widespread soaking we’ve had in many weeks with some of the heaviest rain falling around the Duluth area.
Duluth actually picked up a whopping 4.04” of rain over the past 7 days! BUT, the area is STILL categorized as being in severe drought.
If we look at 30 day rainfall deficits this week compared to 30 days 7 days prior you can see some improvement but lots of big deficits still:
This map does NOT include May or late April when many areas were just as dry.
The problem isn’t just inadequate and infrequent rain but also the confluence timing and consistently abnormally hot temperatures. Remember May through July is the strongest sunshine of the year when our sun angle is at its most direct. When it’s sunny and hot, there’s a lot of evaporation going on, drying soils out and shrinking ponds and lakes.
This should be our wettest time of year. We average over 4 inches of rainfall each month in May, June and July which should equate to about 1 inch of rain each week. The Twin Cities is behind by more than 5 inches of rain over the past two months. That would require us then to receive 2 inches of rain, each week (with consistency) for the next 5 weeks! Needless to say, looking at long range forecast models but even climatology, that’s a near impossible task. That’s why the drought is very likely to remain for most all summer until a combination of consistent rains and cooler temperatures can alleviate the situation.
Truly adding insult to injury is the fact that yet again, June is an extremely hot month in the region. This June is going down as the 3rd hottest on record for the Twin Cities at a whopping +5.3 degrees F above normal. The picture is much the same statewide, in fact, it’s worse north.
The northwest part of the state is the hottest relative to normal for June compared to the southeast corner of the state where temperature anomalies will end up half that.
The problem is the same one we’ve had since May. The heat dome or upper level high pressure bubble was centered over western and central Canada in May with its grip on Minnesota. This was what further dried out western Canada, sparking large scale fires that gave us our first round of air quality issues.
June looks eerily similar overall but with the overall pattern a bit more eastward. It was late May into early June that then helped spark fires in eastern Canada that we’re all still dealing with.
The other development with June is that the area of upper level high pressure got bigger with a secondary area developing in Mexico and Texas and affecting the deep south in recent days. If these two continue to work in tandem heating up central North America, there’s no reason to think July won’t continue to be hot and dry here.
The model consensus is for a hot July to that end. The only model NOT forecasting hotter than normal conditions in July but merely ‘normal’ is the garbage CFS model (lower right below) which has completely botched every forecast recently though some meteorologists for some reason continue to pay attention to it.
More on what we might expect in July in the coming days. In the meantime, keep your AC tuned up and kiddie pool filled with cold water.
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