DAVIS COUNTY, Iowa- The Drought Monitor Report out for this week in Iowa shows dry conditions spreading north towards I-80.
The southern half of Davis County remains in the third week of extreme drought, while parts of southeast and south central Iowa remain in severe, and moderate drought conditions.
We’re in extreme drought right now and there’s no rainfall in sight, said Ed Good, a livestock producer near Bloomfield.
“If we go into the winter like we’re thinking we’re probably going to dry, most of our ponds around here that we use for livestock are going to freeze dry, and we’re not gonna have any water.” Davis County has seen 13 inches of rain total for 2018.
“A lot of the parts of Davis County got a little rain the other day, but it’s so scattered,” said Good.
“The town got an inch and a half, we got six tenths, north of town got even less than that.” Good said due to the lack of grazing for cattle, some producers are looking to sell their herds, driving prices for cattle even lower.
He added that last year the drought was not reported accurately, this year the numbers are reflecting how series the situation is.
“They know now that Davis County is dry and they have the data.” “The saving grace for that is that we’ve had a cooler July,” said Justin Glisan, State Climatologist, at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.
“The first part of July was a little above normal for most of the state, but in the second part of July, cooler conditions prevailed, across much of the state in southeastern and south central Iowa, which helped mitigate crop and livestock stresses that we would get from lack of precipitation.”