Rain arrives in Minnesota, but drought conditions will remain

Showers and thunderstorms arrived in parched Minnesota on Saturday and will linger a few days, but the rain is unlikely to make much of a dent in the drought-like conditions most of the state is experiencing.

"We won't see much improvement," Eric Ahasic, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said Saturday.

Rain was falling in much of the state Saturday evening and expected to continue into the night, with heavy rainfall possible in some areas, according to the NWS.

Southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin will benefit most. They may see an inch or two of precipitation, but rainfall will likely be modest elsewhere in the state — about one-tenth of an inch.

On Sunday, expect scattered thunderstorms, Ahasic said. Downpours may occur with up to an inch of rain, but will be "so localized," he said. "It will help someone's backyard or some farmer's field."

Unsettled weather will continue into early this week, the NWS said, when afternoon and evening showers could fall each day.

Despite the sprinkles, the statewide drought will stay the same or get worse in most of the state this week, with some areas even more parched than in 2015, when the state last experienced a drought, Ahasic said.

Minnesota is "not nearly as dry as the Western U.S., but it's the driest we've been in a long time," he said.

All of Minnesota is at least in the abnormally dry category, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor website, and most of the state is experiencing moderate drought, the next level up on the website's five-level gauge.

About 14% of Minnesota has fallen into the severe drought range, with northwestern and southern portions of the state the hardest hit.

The numbers are worse than last month, when 73% of the state was abnormally dry and 13% was seeing moderate drought.

When an area is rated as abnormally dry, the website says, seed moisture is low and crops are stressed. Water temperatures increase and river and lake levels dip.

Ahasic noted that the drought monitor website updates its statistics only once a week, so numbers won't include any rainfall we've seen since early last week.

But the meager rainfall totals since then are unlikely to have changed the picture, he said.

The last time Minnesota fell into the "extreme drought" category was in 2012, Ahasic said. "That's when you see crops starting to fail and lake levels are at record lows."

"We're not there yet, but we'll have to see how the rest of the summer goes," he said.

Erin Adler • 612-673-1781