Mother Nature was mercurial this week in South Dakota: just as serious drought conditions expanded in a diagonal across the state’s midsection — including Hughes and Stanley counties — in the week ended Tuesday, heavy rains hit parts of the state Wednesday and Thursday, especially in the southeast, flooding homes and roads.
Severe drought returned to Haakon County, just to the west of Stanley County, where some crops have been cut for feed, rather than later-maturing grain, because of the dry conditions, according to the latest news release Thursday from the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which also issues the weekly Drought Monitor Maps.
Meanwhile, the area of moderate drought expanded to include much of Hughes and Stanley counties in the week ended Tuesday, Sept. 18, Drought Monitor officials in Omaha reported on Thursday.
The area of the state under severe drought increased from 2.07 percent of the land to 3.56 percent and the area in moderate drought increased from 9.55 percent a week ago to 12.94 percent in the week ended Tuesday.
Those drought conditions came out of, mostly areas that had been classified for weeks as merely abnormally dry but not yet in actual drought; that category of “abnormally dry” shrank from 27.19 percent of the state’s area a week ago to 23.37 percent as of Tuesday.
The area free of either abnormally dry conditions or drought conditions remained mostly unchanged, at 60.13 percent of the state, compared with 61.19 percent a week ago, according to the Drought Monitor Map.
Pierre received 0.57 inch of rain on Thursday by 5 p.m., bringing its 2018 precipitation total to 14.23, which still remains 2.16 inches below normal for the period.
Pierre, in fact, had received less than 25 percent of its 30-year-norm for rainfall over the past two months, before Thursday’s rains came.
Rapid City, with 0.53 inch of rain Thursday by 5 p.m., now totals 24.25 inches of precipitation in 2018 so far, 7.53 inches above normal for the period, according to preliminary statistics from the weather service.
North Dakota had seen only 30 percent of normal rainfall the past two months, as moderate and severe drought conditions expanded in the west parts of the state.