A few picked up some beneficial rainfall last week, whether it was from the more widespread rainfall on Sunday and Monday or from the more isolated storms Thursday and Friday. It was feast or famine, some locations hardly picked up any rain over the two events like east-central Nebraska, while others picked up a lot more rainfall like southwestern Iowa. Was it enough to put a dent in the drought? How much more rain is needed to break the drought? All that, and more, will be answered below.
As mentioned above, it was feast or famine for most. Take a look at the widespread rainfall amounts from across the region. The highest swath of rain fell from just south of the Omaha metro through southwest Iowa into northern Missouri. Some isolated rainfall totals exceeded 5" around Sidney in Fremont County.
Despite the much needed rainfall, we are still far from where we should be for the month of August, or even for 2022. By August 21, Omaha should have received a little over 3" of rain, but we are around half that amount for August. As for 2022, we are around 4.6" inches below our average rainfall for this time of the year.
Unfortunately, the recent rainfall will not be enough to put an end to the drought across the region. The latest Drought Monitor Index issued on Thursday does not show much change. Moderate drought is in the Omaha metro, with severe drought as far to the south as Fremont to Tekamah. In Wayne & Thurston Counties, extreme (4 of 5) drought is still there. (NOTE: Although the index comes out every Thursday, it only records data through Tuesday. This means that the rainfall received late in the week was not added to the drought monitor. However, it is unlikely the rainfall made any significant impacts to end the drought.)
To break a drought, you need repeated instances of soaking rainfall to make any progress. One bout of rainfall a few inches, but dry for the next several weeks will ultimately not do much in the long term. To break the drought, our area would need to pick up nearly 13" of rainfall from now to the end of the year to completely erode it. On average, the region sees roughly 9" from now through the end of the year. This means we need 150-180% of our normal rainfall to completely break the drought.
Rain chances return to the forecast into the weekend, but only time will tell whether the fall months will bring wet conditions back to our part of the world.
