North Dakota
May rains led to big improvement in drought conditions
Some North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network stations went a year without getting a daily half-inch of rain, and some went nearly two years without a daily 1-inch rainfall. Heavy rainfall throughout much of the region since the middle of May has changed that and helped improve drought situations in much of the region.
Bowman County had several stations that hadn’t received a soaking rainfall in a long time. But the rain didn’t fall evenly everywhere.
“In Bowman, we are close to 4 inches of rainfall the last two weeks,” said Penny Nester, North Dakota State University Extension ag and natural resources agent for Bowman County. “In the places out west, like along the Montana-South Dakota lines, they’ve been a little bit drier, so they probably got an inch, eighty hundredths, total, it’s just so spotty.”
But in some places, the rain came with some low temperatures and frost. In Bowman County, two NDAWN stations hit 31 degrees.
“So crop wise, you know we have enough small grains that that’s not going to be a big issue for us. But on the side of alfalfa and hay production and pasture production, that’s kind of what everyone is waiting for to see if it’s going to nip our alfalfa,” Nester said.
The worst drought conditions in North Dakota largely have been in the northwest, including McKenzie County, where dry conditions led to wildfires in the fall of 2024. About half of the county had been in extreme drought as of May 13, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, along with large portions of Mountrail, Dunn, Billings and Golden Valley counties.
Several NDAWN stations in McKenzie County received more than a third of an inch of rain May 14, and on May 15 and 16, numerous stations received more than an inch or even more than 2 inches of rain each day. That was followed by more than a quarter of an inch in some places May 19. Through May 27, the Watford City NDAWN station had received 5.18 inches for the month.
The Drought Monitor released May 29 showed marked improvement in North Dakota since May 13, though parts of McKenzie County, Dunn, Billings and Golden Valley counties still had spots of extreme drought.
Jenny Schlecht / Agweek
Much of central North Dakota hasn’t struggled as much with drought conditions, but even some of those places were getting a little dry. That included Foster County, where NDSU Extension ag and natural resources agent Jeff Gale said farmers had gotten a good start on planting prior to the rainfall, which amounted to 2.26 inches at the Carrington NDAWN station and 1.81 inches at the Cooperstown station.
Farmers had gotten a good start on planting by the time the rain started and likely were ready for a short break, but the continued storms put them out about 10 days, he said.
“Often, the rule of thumb is, we’ll take rain whenever we can get it. It’s a headache at planting time, people get anxious,” he said. “But it’s nice to have the soil profile full of water heading into growing season.”
Farmers were back in the fields a few days after the rain stopped, and Gale said with a good week of work, most of the county’s crops will be planted. On the cattle side, ranchers have complained a little about muddy lots, but the cool, wet weather also kick-started pasture growth, he said.
Jenny Schlecht / Agweek
Even with the long break from planting in some places, planting progress remains on or ahead of the average pace in the region, according to a Crop Progress report released May 27 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.
North Dakota wasn’t alone in getting much-needed rain. In southwestern South Dakota, the Fall River station of the South Dakota Mesonet received only 15.5 inches of rain in 2024. So far, the station has received 4.04 inches in 2025, including 1.45 inches in May of which 1.39 inches fell from May 14 to 20. The Red River Valley and much of southern Minnesota received heavy rain on May 20.
The rain should help pastures in drought-stricken places, but since they already were stressed by previous years of dry conditions and grasshoppers, along with recent frost, it won’t solve all the problems.
Drought conditions improved in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota after the rains, but pockets of severe drought remain in South Dakota and North Dakota, with some extreme drought still in parts of western North Dakota. Extreme drought remains in northwestern Bowman County.
“Our recommendation is that we need rain before June 1st, and then, if it’s after June 1st, then we have to start looking at carrying capacity reduction,” Nester said. “But I think with the drought conditions that we’ve had previously, we’re just not really getting the grass that we should see by now, so we probably still are looking at decreased stocking rates regardless.”
More rain will be needed throughout the growing season still, and Nester said it’s always hard to tell how things will turn out. Grain farmers in the county are largely finished planting, while most livestock producers likely still have seed to put in the ground, she said. There are questions about how the weather conditions have impacted fertilizer that was applied earlier, and concerns about weeds that will come later.
But though the May rain didn’t solve all the problems of the growing season, Nester said it certainly still was vital. For instance, it likely saved the canola crop in the area.
“Everything that we got, we sure appreciated. So we didn’t get 6 or 8 inches, like other places did this last week, but we just got enough to at least put everyone in a little bit better mood, and we know that our crops are probably going to make it to the next stage of production. So that’s all that we can hope for,” Nester said.
BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) – North Dakota leaders unveiled an initiative aimed at getting more oil out of the Bakken, using enhanced oil recovery and CO₂.
Senator John Hoeven said the effort is getting a boost from $36 million from the Department of Energy for “Crack the Code 2.0,” a $157 million initiative with state and industry funding.
Hoeven said the goal is to use CO₂ for enhanced oil recovery, calling it “an important, usable, valuable commodity” and saying, “We’re linking our coal plants with our oil and gas producing companies to do it.”
Funding will be used to develop technology to make enhanced oil recovery profitable and viable, and then implement it in North Dakota oil fields in a number of pilot projects.
Hoeven said current recovery rates in the Bakken are limited.
“We’re only producing about 10 to 12% of the oil out of that shale,” he said, “But with EOR, advanced oil recovery techniques, we can double it. We can take it from 10 to 12% up to 25% or better.”
Hoeven said the effort is also tied to electricity demand, saying North Dakota will “produce more electricity for a company that wants to do AI, that wants to do data centers, needs more and more electricity,” and that “it isn’t just about oil and gas.”
North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness said the pilot projects are expected to start soon.
“We hope to see these pilots putting their technologies into the ground sometime late this year, first quarter of next year,” said Ness.
“So I would expect by this time next year, we’re going to maybe potentially begin to see what are some of the results early on,” Ness added. “And again, this is going to take multiple, multiple swings at this thing. It’s not going to just happen. If it was easy, we’d be doing it. Nobody’s done it anywhere in the world. This is where we’re going to crack the code.”
Copyright 2026 KFYR. All rights reserved.
Three years after a deal with Fairview was called off, South Dakota-based Sanford Health is getting into the Twin Cities market with a new merger.
On Friday, the health system announced that it will combine with North Memorial Health.
Fairview, Sanford call off planned merger
Under the merger, Sanford says the organization will invest $600 million to strengthen the Robbinsdale hospital and double the Maple Grove hospital’s size.
Sanford is the largest rural nonprofit health system in the country, with 58 hospitals and roughly 56,000 employees across the Dakotas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Wyoming and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. North Memorial operates two hospitals in Robbinsdale and Maple Grove, along with several other clinics, employing more than 6,500 people.
If completed, the health systems plan to keep some local leadership in place, including North Memorial CEO Trevor Sawallish, and two North Memorial board members will serve on the combined system’s board. However, the overall company will be led by Sanford CEO Bill Gassen.
The companies say they expect the merger to close later this year, as long as regulatory processes don’t cause delays.
Sanford’s previous attempt to merge with Fairview was called off in 2023, eight months after initially announcing the planned merger. Many Minnesotans raised concerns about that transaction, including Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, although some of that was due to the University of Minnesota’s partnership with Fairview and the possibility of an out-of-state company running the state’s flagship medical school.
As with most mergers, concerns are still likely to arise about possible cutbacks and the impact on the state’s healthcare quality. However, the deal seems more likely to be completed than Sanford’s past attempts.
Reaction
SEIU Healthcare Minnesota & Iowa, who represents over 1,000 workers at North Memorial, called the news “worrisome.”
“At a time when healthcare costs are skyrocketing for Minnesota families and frontline healthcare workers are getting squeezed by short staffing levels, this latest attempt at consolidation brings many concerns. It is especially concerning because previous merger attempts by Sanford Health to come into Minnesota have failed due to their values and corporate behavior,” the union said.
SEIU also called on Ellison “to use all of his office’s powers within the law to provide oversight into this proposed merger and ensure the interests of Minnesota’s workers and patients are protected.”
Ellison’s office is asking the public to submit information through an online Community Input Form.
“As we have done and are currently doing with other healthcare transactions, we are conducting a thorough review of this potential acquisition to ensure it complies with the law and is in the public interest,” Ellison daid. “Proposed health care consolidation requires careful examination. As long as I am Attorney General, I will use the full range of regulatory tools to protect Minnesotans’ access to quality, affordable healthcare.”
The Minnesota Nurses Association released a statement saying it is “deeply concerned” by the merger announcement, warning it “could have far-reaching consequences for patients, healthcare workers, and the communities they serve.”
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BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) – Here’s something North Dakotans can take pride in: North Dakota has the third-highest average IQ in the nation, tying with Vermont at 103.8. That is 3.5 points above the national average.
The state with the highest average is Massachusetts at 104.3 and the state with the lowest average is Mississippi at 94.2.
Ninety-four percent of North Dakotans graduate high school, making it the state with the sixth-highest graduation rate in the nation.
Copyright 2026 KFYR. All rights reserved.
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