Submitted Photo This United States Drought Monitor map issued Thursday shows that much of North Dakota, despite a recent series of thunderstorms, remains in moderate to extreme drought. The red areas are rated as extreme drought, dark brown as severe and light brown as moderate drought. The yellow area on the map indicates abnormally dry conditions.

It’s dry throughout the state. Darn dry. Drought dry. In places, maybe too far behind to catch up.

The United States Drought Monitor issued their latest assessment of dry conditions in North Dakota Thursday. Despite some scattered thunderstorms that brought much needed precipitation to many areas the past several days, not enough rain fell. In fact, concludes the Drought Monitor, dry conditions have actually worsened over much of the state.

Drought conditions of varying degrees persist from southern Ward County to the South Dakota border. A large section of the state along the U.S. Highway 83 corridor from Minot to approximately 25 miles south of Bismarck is ranked as being in extreme drought along with a sizable area of the southwest part of the state and a small region of the extreme northwest.

To the south of Minot, conditions for farmers and ranchers have not reached the desperation stage, but it is getting close. Crops are struggling to grow and hayland is drying up. There are reports of some ranchers selling off cattle before feed supplies becomes scarce.

“The hay supply is going to be really short. The pastures are in tough shape just like the crops,” said Bruce Marchand, manager of the McLean Elevator in Benedict. “It’s plenty on the dry side.”

The Benedict area received about an inch of rain last week. However, rainfall was somewhat spotty. Where the rain fell was certainly helpful, especially given the abnormally dry conditions. It was enough to keep crops alive but more is needed, and soon.

“It is starting to get serious,” said Marchand when asked about increasingly dry conditions. “We’ve got crops, we just need timely rains now. We can’t get hot and dry weather and windy conditions anymore or they’ll start going backwards.”

The National Weather Service has official precipitation reporting points at several locations in the state, including Minot and Bismarck. Statistics show Minot to be well behind in average rainfall with a mere 2.56 inches of precipitation for the year. Normal is 7.93 inches, meaning Minot’s rainfall has been 5.37 inches less than the long-term norm. Bismarck has received more rain than Minot so far this year with 4.33 inches, but that amount is 3.77 inches less than average for the date.

While temperatures have cooled a bit, which helps in terms of drying out soil, the winds have behaved just the opposite with many days of gusts exceeding 30 miles per hour. High winds accelerate the drying process, increasing the need for more rain. According to the NWS, there’s just not much of chance of meaningful rainfall for the next several days. It is a very concerning situation for many growers.

“It makes it nip and tuck,” said Marchand.

The precipitation outlook issued by the Climate Prediction Center through July 1 calls for below normal rainfall to the west of North Dakota but considers North Dakota chances for precipitation to be normal. Unfortunately, normal in late June and early July isn’t the best news.

According to the Drought Monitor, “In the Dakotas, western areas typically receive over two-thirds their annual precipitation during April-July, so a lack of adequate late spring and early summer rains are critical to dryland farming and livestock grazing and cuttings of pasture and range grasses. Temperatures have also averaged well above normal the past few weeks, and combined with strong winds, have evaporated much of the soil moisture much quicker than expected.”

Minot’s forecast contains only a 20 percent chance of rain well into next week. After that, there is increased hope for rain looming though. The CPC’s outlook for June 29-July 5 shows some promise for an above normal pattern of rainfall. Looking even further ahead, July through September, most of the state is rated as having a 50 percent chance of exceeding normal rainfall totals for the period.

North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring has joined the state’s legislative representatives in urging action on behalf of farmers and ranchers dealing with dry conditions by requesting that haying and grazing be allowed on Conservation Reserve Program acres.

Although the Fourth of July holiday remains several days away, there are already several counties that have imposed a ban on fireworks due to extremely dry conditions. Ward County has no fireworks ban but is under a fire emergency burn ban declaration. Information on burning and fireworks restrictions can be found by accessing the ND Fire Danger Index on the internet.