With rain back in the forecast, I decided to take a look at where we stood in the drought department. It sure is amazing the difference a year or two makes. I'm sure many of us remember how bad the drought was last year, the year before and back in 2007 - especially into the southern states. Slowly that has been improving over the past couple of years with the Pacific storms coming onshore in the west, the rain thanks to more of an El Nino weather pattern in the south and a wet fall and winter in Texas. Looking at the drought monitor now we notice a big difference across the south and even into the west. Hopefully this trend will continue into the spring and summer, although we don't want to see as much rain across the Midwest as we saw last year!
Looking back at the Drought Monitor (DM) archive (http://drought.unl.edu/dm/archive.html)it looks like northern Illinois' last severe drought was May '05 - Apr '06. From what I recall things were pretty bad that year.
ReplyDeleteLooking at NOAA's Seasonal Drought Outlook (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/seasonal_drought.html) it doesn't look like that will happen again this year, but nature will do what it wants so it doesn't hurt to be prepared!
For great information about drought visit the National Drought Mitigation Center's website (http://drought.unl.edu/), and check back frequently because a new and improved site will be rolled out in the near future (shameless plug! lol).