U.S. Drought Monitor: 80% of Minnesota now ‘abnormally dry’

MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) - Drought conditions persist as Minnesota moves towards its cold weather months.

“We’re just one level away from the worst it can be, which is exceptionally dry,” said KEYC News Now Meteorologist Caitlyn Lorr.

The U.S. Drought Monitor reported Thursday 79.5% the state is abnormally dry.

52% of Minnesota is experiencing moderate drought and 19.2% severe drought.

6.5% is in extreme drought, which is up 4.2% from last week.

“Up to Oct. 31, we are sitting at just over 15 inches of rainfall or precipitation for the entire year,” Lorr mentioned. “We should be sitting at around 31 inches, so for us to even catch up to where we need to be, we need about 16+ inches of rain.”

Sibley, Nicollet, Brown and Cottonwood are among the counties seeing the driest conditions.

“There’s not much water in the soil at all right now. The top two feet has basically no water left in it,” stated Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Climatologist Pete Boulay.

The lack of rain doesn’t come without consequences.

“The agriculture community has to find new ways to bring water supplies to their crops,” Lorr added. “It adds into not only the agriculture aspect, but the revenue aspect as well. That’s why you see a price hike in certain products.”

Record-setting high temperatures have recently accompanied the dry conditions.

“It feels like we have a lot more summer than any other season now,” Lorr said. “The outlining problem of that is climate change and global warming. We just have to take better care of our home so that we can turn that around and get our rain totals and temperatures back to where they need to be.”

Thursday night saw about a half-inch of rainfall, but experts say it’s too early to tell what November. or the rest of the year, holds.

“We’ll take any moisture we can get at this point, but really we’ll still be in this drought come spring unless something really major happens over the winter,” Boulay explained.

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