Wonderful! We’ll take it!

Moisture fell throughout the Minot region and much of the state starting this past Sunday, the first precipitation in 40 days for the Minot area. The moisture fell as a mixture of rain and snow, and fell on some of the driest ground in memory with much of the state mired in extreme drought conditions.

While the moisture came down the spirits of local producers went up, reversing several weeks of agonizing over when some relief from drought conditions might occur. The quarter to half-inch or more of moisture recorded in the region though Monday afternoon certainly was an attention-getter, even if not enough to bring and end to drought conditions.

“That’s being a little to optimistic,” said Brandon Gale, National Weather Service meteorologist in Bismarck. “We probably need a couple of inches to stop the drought from getting worse, even more to reverse it. It does make people feel better, but definitely not a drought-ender in any way.”

But it’s a start and you have to start somewhere to replenish soil moisture. Enough moisture may have fallen over a wide area to be sufficient enough to germinate crops, even it it wasn’t enough to significantly alleviate soil moisture deficits.

“The reality is in the soil profile. We’re about two inches short of moisture,” said Allen Schlag, NWS hydrologist. “Minot got more than Bismarck. Down here we got about a quarter-inch, the Minot area maybe north of a half-inch to 3/4’s.”

Schlag noted that much more precipitation was needed, perhaps another two inches of it, in April to see improvement in drought conditions. He noted that the Minot area, as has been much of the state, very dry for several months dating back to the first half of 2020.

“We can’t make that up, but what we can do is make up our soil moisture deficit,” said Schlag. “Right now we’re wet in the first two inches or so but the area of the root zone for crops is still going to be bone dry. We need to follow up this event with another one.”

Short-term forecasts covering the period through April 26, call for less than normal precipitation combined with normal to below-normal temperatures for North Dakota.