The US Drought Monitor will be released later this morning and will likely show continued degradation of analyzed drought over Iowa. The current drought got started late during the 2025 growing season and took a bite out of what should have been exceptional crop yields. The situation has not improved much since and as we quickly approach the 2026 growing season, the impacts of recent dryness are being to be felt. The featured map presents percent of average precipitation totals from IEM tracked long term climate sites in Iowa since the start of August. A number of locations over southeastern Iowa are shown below 50% of average over this period. Hopefully a rainfall event today into Friday will bring much needed precipitation, but some parts of the state will miss out and it will be a number of days before the next significant rainfall arrives.

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