St. Cloud Metro Now in ‘Extreme Drought’
UNDATED (WJON News) -- The St. Cloud metro area is now in an extreme drought.
Thursday's update from the U.S. Drought Monitor says just over one percent of the state is in the extreme drought which includes us here in the St. Cloud metro (eastern Stearns, much of Benton, and northwestern Sherburne counties), a small pocket just north of the Twin Cities metro area, and another area near Rochester.
On the map above, red is extreme drought, orange is severe drought, tan is moderate drought, and yellow is abnormally dry.
After Wednesday night's rain, St. Cloud has had a total of 2.21 inches of rain going back to late April. We would normally have over 11 inches of rain during that period.
Right now this is the 5th driest July on record in St. Cloud, after having the 3rd driest June and 4th driest May on record.
The chart below from the National Weather Service shows that this is by far the driest we've been for this period in recorded history, even much drier than the infamous drought year of 1988.
The U.S. Drought Monitor says 18 percent of the state is now in a severe drought, up from 11 percent last week. Seventy percent of the state is in a moderate drought, up from 64 percent a week ago. And, 100 percent of the state is still listed as abnormally dry.
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