After a very dry spring, the summer pattern quickly turned around, bringing multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms across eastern Nebraska and western Iowa from the end of June into July. These repeated rounds of rain have been making an impact, and the latest drought monitor reflects this change. However, the drought reduction might be reduced as we enter a drier pattern into next week. For the details, keep reading.
July was wet for Omaha, so far this month, it has rained on more days than not. Some of these rainy days came with strong to severe storms, as what occurred the morning of July 12. This places Omaha at over 4" so far this July, which is above our monthly average by nearly 0.7".
Although we are still running a deficit for the yearly rainfall totals, we have been closing that gap recently. We began July at nearly 6" below our yearly rain, but we have halved that total by July 20.
It has been fairly wet for much of the area, with Lincoln and Beatrice seeing over 5" of rainfall so far this July!
All of this is to give context to the new drought monitor, which is a great improvement from the last few weeks. Let's step through each week to show the drought changes.
As the drought continues to improve, we do hit a little snag in the road. The wet pattern we have been in for the last few weeks might begin to shift. A large dome of high pressure which has been baking the southwest US in record heat will expand eastward into next week. This will bring 2 things to Omaha, the first is summer-like heat returns with highs in the 90s. So, although we are not breaking records next week, the big heat we have not seen so far this summer finally rears its ugly head.
The second major trend is we shut off the storm train for a while, with the core energy being moved into Canada and the northern US. It likely will not be completely dry, we do have a small chance of rain on Saturday. However, the near-daily rounds of rain and storms will stop for a bit.
Luckily, long-range forecasts do show that as we head into August we could get more wet again. The Climate Prediction Center has outlined much of the lower Midwest, including Omaha, in a greater chance of above-average rainfall. If this forecast holds, expect more possible drought relief as we head into August.
