It’s been the longest drought in Iowa in more than 60 years

For the first time in nearly four years, Iowa is drought-free.

Only parts of Eastern Iowa were categorized as “abnormally dry” Thursday, but they fell out of the four drought categories assigned by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

“This is really exciting,” Iowa State University’s Agricultural Climatologist Madelynn Wuestenberg said. “Leading up to spring, we knew we would need above-average rainfall to bust this drought, and that’s exactly what we saw.”

Iowa is out of drought conditions because the state has experienced record rainfall over the past two months, State Climatologist Justin Glisan said.

This year, he said, has been among the wettest starts of the year in the 152 years rainfall has been tracked in Iowa.

“Across the state, we’re about 16 inches (of rain) for the year, and that is almost 6 inches above average,” Glisan said. “Getting 150 percent above normal (rainfall) in April and May is when you bank soil moisture and start chipping away at the precipitation deficit.”

For the last 203 weeks, at least part of Iowa had a D1 (moderate drought) rating. The last date the state had no drought rating was June 30, 2020.

Glisan said this most recent drought was the longest Iowa has had in over 60 years.

Before Thursday, Iowa was one of three states — Oklahoma and New Mexico being the others — in a record drought, he said.

Last year, which saw only about 27 inches of precipitation — nearly 9 inches less than normal — was Iowa’s 22nd driest in 151 years of records, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources reported in January. It also tied 2016 as the 10th warmest year on record.

The worst of Iowa’s drought was recorded Dec. 19, 2023, when 35 percent of the state was classified as being in “extreme drought.”

Glisan said the removal of drought status goes hand in hand with the severe weather the state has experienced recently. More than 100 tornadoes have been reported in Iowa this year, the most in more than a decade.

As we enter the year’s warmest months, Iowa will need consistent rainfall to keep the soil moisture balanced and maintain its drought-free status, Glisan said.

“We’ll need timely rainfall to ensure it’s not too dry but also not too wet,” he said. “There is always a potential we see drought reemerge, given how long the 2020 to 2024 drought was.”

Outlook

Iowa’s seven-day weather forecast predicts 1 to 2 inches of rain.

If that level of rainfall continues into June, the eastern parts of the state still labeled “abnormally dry” could lose that status.

Wuestenberg, of ISU, said decreasing drought can be a double-edged sword for farmers since fields can become too wet to plant crops.

“If farmers haven’t finished planting by April or May, then these wet conditions can keep you out of the field or create ponding,” she said. “If you have already planted crops, there can be emergence issues because you get rainfall on the soil, which creates a crust and causes a barrier for crops to burst through the surface.”

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An EF-4 tornado carved a path of destruction through Greenfield, Iowa, on May 21, 2024. With peak winds of 185 miles per hour, the twister’s rampage through the little town is visible in this image captured by the Sentinel 2 satellite on May 25. (Credit: Modified Copernicus Sentinel data processed by Tom Yulsman)

It has been quite a spring for twisters in the United States. So far this year, the preliminary tally from the Storm Prediction Center has reached 1,035 tornadoes, with 872 of them occurring in April and May.

And we’ve still got another peak month of activity left to go.

One of the most destructive of this season’s tornadoes spun up on Tuesday, May 21 in southwestern Iowa. It then carved a destructive 44-mile path to the northeast, ultimately rampaging through tiny Greenfield, population 2,062. Spinning at 185 miles per hour, the EF-4 twister reached a terrifying maximum extent of more than a half mile wide.

Tragically, it killed five people in Greenfield.

The gash it cut through the town is seen in the satellite image above, and also in this one released by NASA today:

This spring’s tornadic toll has been driven by the clash of two air masses: relatively cool air to the north and west, and a gigantic, stagnant, high-pressure dome of hot air parked over Mexico and the U.S. Gulf States. The jet stream coursing between these clashing air masses has swept a series of storm systems through Texas, Oklahoma and up into the Midwest.

The result: huge thunderstorms with powerful convective updrafts that propelled moist air high into the atmosphere — sometimes into the stratosphere in a phenomenon called overshooting cloud tops.

“When this type of updraft ingests a very unstable airmass with large vertical wind shear, catastrophic tornadoes and large hail are often the result,” says Kristopher Bedka, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center, quoted in a post at NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Preliminary data shows that there have been four days with at least 30 tornadoes rated EF-1 or stronger in the United States. The average is two annually. According to Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storms Laboratory, quoted in a story in USA Today, that likely puts 2024 in the top 10 percent of years.

DES MOINES — A state grant program will fund 61 new free summer meal sites for Iowa children in low-income families, the state education department has announced.

The $900,000 grant program was created by Gov. Kim Reynolds after she declined $29 million in federal funding to remain in a federal program that provided $40 per month to low-income families for food during the summer months.

The new state program still is supported by federal dollars: Reynolds used federal pandemic assistance funding to finance the program.

Under the new Summer Meal Program Expansion Grant program, 38 grant recipients were chosen from among 43 applicants. Of the 38 recipients, 36 are public or private school districts; the others are the Northeast Iowa Food Bank in Waterloo and Story Medical Center in Nevada, Iowa. Of the recipients, 14 are new sponsors and collectively are creating 19 new meal sites in their communities.

The average grant was $23,684, and 24 of the 38 grants awarded were for $16,639. Most grant recipients will use the funding to operate between one and three summer meal sites.

But the Central Community School District in Elkader received a $51,557 grant — the largest award — to fund four meal sites. Those sites begin June 6, according to the district.

The Cedar Rapids Community School District received a $39,918 grant to fund three meal sites — at Noelridge Park, the Cedar River Academy at Taylor Elementary and the Truman Early Childhood Center. The sites will run for different time frames, according to the district’s application, but they begin June 10 at Noelridge and Truman and June 17 at Taylor.

The Marion Independent District received $16,639 for a site at Starry Elementary, from June 3 to Aug. 16, and the Iowa City Community School District also was awarded $16,639 for a site at Hills Elementary School, which will close for academic programs at the end of the school year. The meals program there will run June 17 to Aug. 2, according to the district’s application.

Among the applicants that did not receive grant funding was St. Joseph Catholic School in Marion, which had requested $93,400 over three years, including $24,100 in the first year, to expand its Seamless Summer Option program.

New meal sites were required to be in areas where at least 50 percent of the children are eligible for free or reduced-price meals.

“Through partnerships with schools and community-based providers, the Summer Meal Expansion Grant builds upon family-focused solutions to support child nutrition and well-being in the summer,” Iowa Department of Education Director McKenzie Snow said in a statement. “We commend the awardees for their leadership in growing the reach and impact of these programs, providing children with no-cost, healthy meal options in enriching environments this summer and beyond.”

The 61 new sites add to the more than 500 summer meal sites that operated in Iowa last year, according to the education department.

Luke Elzinga, board chair of the Iowa Hunger Coalition, said the daily average participation at summer meal sites in Iowa in 2023 was 21,557. Elzinga said more than 245,000 Iowa children would have received the $40 per month from the federal Summer EBT program that Reynolds rejected.

“While we certainly welcome the new grant program to expand summer meal sites, we also recognize that barriers will remain for families to access those sites. Summer EBT is meant to complement, not replace, summer feeding sites,” Elzinga said in a statement when Reynolds announced the new grant program.

The new grants help expand participation in two current federal summer child nutrition programs — the Summer Food Service Program and Seamless Summer Option. Those programs are administered by the Iowa Department of Education in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Free summer meal site operates will be reimbursed with the grant funds once their operating budgets are finalized, the state education department said.

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