The Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service has released data on the rainfall Minnesota saw in June, and the results are “not pretty”.
The rainfall summary for June outside of parts of central Minnesota is well below normal. A big swath of the state from Redwood Falls down to Mankato, up to the Twin Cities and over to Litchfield saw less than 1" of rain, or about 4" below normal.
In other words, we could really use some rain.
Mike Griesinger, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, tells WCCO that the lack of rain last summer was really made up over the winter.
“I would say we were doing really good,” Griesinger explains. “Obviously the drought last year and then, especially up in Northern Minnesota, a really good winter, lots of moisture. Even down here, we got enough snow and rain and all winter, all the way through April and into May to kind of recover from what we had happened last year.”
However, Griesinger says the faucet turned off across most of the state.
“Really since the last week of May, big chunk of the center of Southern Minnesota from Twin Cities down to Mankato, then over to Redwood falls and up towards say Paynesville basically had precipitation cut off,” Griesinger told WCCO’s Mark Freie. “Many areas in there had less than an inch of rain for the month of June. For the month, for all three of the summer months, June, July, and August, we should get up around four and a quarter inches of rain. So to have less than an inch, you add up your deficit rather quickly.”
The deficit we see in June has a very large effect on how we do the rest of the year according to Griesinger.
“The problem there is, everything greened up now,” he says. “So all the plants are looking for water. And the plants are trying to get water from the soil. Then it's in the nineties, and not only in nineties, but we had a decent amount of wind, which also helps to really dry things out. The hot temperatures, lack of rainfall and the wind, all of that really helps to dry the soils. We're kind of sitting at a point right now as we start July where, if we don't get some, meaningful rains here from the Twin Cities west toward like Wilmer and Redwood Falls, we could be having some big problems here for the rest of the summer.”
The good news says Griesinger is that last year’s lack of rain was nearly statewide. So far at least, our deficit is limited to only parts of Minnesota.
“Not everybody needs to have seven inches of rain in the month of July. It’s a concentrated area that could use that. But that's the big difference.”
There are slight chances for rain for the metro area each day over the next week, with the best chance coming on July 4th. But there isn’t anything in the upcoming forecast to put much of a dent in our rain deficit at this point.
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