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A wet week has led to improvement in drought conditions in North Dakota, not enough to say good-bye to dry, but at least a small step in the right direction.

According to this week’s issuance of the U.S. Drought Monitor, North Dakota’s amount of land considered to be D4, or in “exceptional” drought, dropped substantially from 13% to 6%. While that change is certainly good news, the recent rainfall wasn’t enough to bring the drought to an end, particularly when factoring in soil moisture conditions.

Some areas of the High Plains saw minor improvement to soil moisture levels due to rainfall but that didn’t hold true for some locales, especially western North Dakota where “soil moisture deficits have severely impacted crops as well as pasture and rangeland conditions” concludes the Drought Monitor.

The latest USDA North Dakota Crop Progress and Conditions report rated pasture and range condition across the state as 61% very poor and 24% poor. Livestock water supplies were rated 58% very short and 31% short. Climatological data reveals that from August 2020 through July 2021, North Dakota experienced its third driest period on record.