Iowa is wetter than it’s been in nearly a year

Another wet week helped lift parts of Iowa from drought, and the remaining dry conditions are predicted to continue to ease into the summer.

More than an inch-and-a-half of rain fell, on average, across the state last week, according to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report. That was about 74% more than is normally expected.

The result was an 8% decrease in the area of the state that is suffering from drought, according to a U.S. Drought Monitor report on Thursday.

The most noticeable gain was in southwest Iowa in parts or all of nine counties. Drought also retreated in southeast, northeast and north-central parts of the state.

About 58% of Iowa has some measure of drought — down from a recent high of about 97% in September. But it’s still drier than it was a year ago, when about 30% of the state had drought.

A broad area of eastern Iowa that had extreme drought — the second-to-worst classification — and occupied more than a third of the state early this year has dwindled, the Drought Monitor reported. Less than 3% of the state is now classified that way.

The dryness is expected to improve in the coming months, according to the federal Climate Prediction Center. Drought in the southwest quadrant of Iowa might be almost entirely gone.

About 13% of the state’s corn crop and 8% of its soybeans had been planted as of Sunday, the USDA said.

Nearly two-thirds of the state’s topsoil had adequate or surplus soil moisture for growing crops, along with about 45% of its deeper soil. That was a marked improvement from a week ago but still trailed soil moisture a year ago.