The weekly US Drought Monitor will be released later this morning and likely show some improvements thanks to the heavy rains over the past week, but Iowa is still has a ways to go before being drought free. The driest areas of the state continue to be mostly confined to the SE, SW, and NW corners of Iowa. The featured map presents an IEM computation of the percentage of weeks since the start of 2025 that analyzed drought of at least "D1: Moderate Drought" was present. There's an interesting sliver of area from Creston to south of Des Moines that has avoided D1+ over this period! The near term forecast has plenty of significant rainfall chances, so hopefully continued drought busting can occur before the start of the 2026 growing season!

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