Extreme drought develops in northeast Iowa

Drought conditions in Iowa have worsened amid a lack of rainfall and a heat wave that has stretched for days.

A large area of extreme drought has developed in several northeast Iowa counties, according to a U.S. Drought Monitor weekly report on Thursday. That is the second-worst classification of four the agency uses to denote drought conditions.

The counties included in the new severe drought classification include Black Hawk, Grundy, Butler, Bremer, Chickasaw, Floyd, and a small eastern portion of Allamakee County.

An area of southeast Iowa continues to be in severe drought this week, a classification it’s had since early July.

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As a whole, the state is drier than it’s been in more than a month. Iowa averaged less than a third of its normal rainfall last week, and high temperatures have hovered above 90 degrees since last weekend.

An excessive heat warning for the entire state issued by the National Weather Service expired Thursday night.

The Drought Monitor’s latest report was based on conditions as of Tuesday morning. It said about 74 percent of the state was suffering from some measure of drought — which was unchanged from a week ago — but dryness worsened in north-central and northeast Iowa.

The typically wettest months of the year have passed, and relatively heavy rainfall in the first half of August did little to improve the drought in Iowa. That led the federal Climate Prediction Center to reverse its rosier outlook for drought and predict that a similar dryness will persist in the state for the next two months.

About 47 percent of the state’s topsoil had sufficient moisture for growing crops as of Sunday, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

This article first appeared in the Iowa Capital Dispatch.