Although Minnesota escaped the worst of this summer's blistering U.S. drought, dry conditions have spread across the state in recent weeks and aren't expected to ease soon.
The U.S. Drought Monitor last week identified a band of central Minnesota, including the northern half of the metro area, as experiencing moderate drought. That put 44 percent of the state in some kind of drought status, up slightly from the previous week. Two tongues of southern Minnesota are in extreme drought.
Meanwhile, the national Climate Prediction Center sees a strong trend toward lower-than-normal precipitation across virtually all of Minnesota for the rest of September. Through Friday, only .11 inch of rain had fallen this month at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. If that pace continues, this will be the driest September on record.
The second-driest occurred only a year ago, on the way to an odd sequence of an extremely dry fall and winter followed by the Twin Cities' second-wettest May on record and torrents of rain in northeast and southeast Minnesota in mid-June.
'Flash drought'
Since August began, most of Minnesota has received less than 3 inches of rain; central Minnesota, including much of the metro, less than 2. At the Southern Research and Outreach Center in Waseca, soil moisture is the lowest it's been since the drought of 1988. Minnesota state climatologist Greg Spoden called it a "flash drought."
"We had 14 1/2 inches of rain in May. You'd have figured we had enough rain to last forever a that point," said Steve Eid, owner of Steve's Elk River Nursery, in the heart of the newly designated drought area. "But you're really seeing [drought] in the lawns and especially the shade trees right now. They're dropping leaves sooner than they should. I don't see where we're going to have a lot of good fall color because of the stress you see in the trees."
Declining river flows and decreases in other water levels have prompted the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to suspend or restrict surface-water use permits to businesses, golf courses, parks departments and others in various parts of the state. The agency told 16 users, from Moorhead-based American Crystal Sugar to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service project in southeast Minnesota, that their water withdrawals were being suspended until conditions improve. Some permits were suspended during last fall's dry weather; 350 were suspended in the epic drought years of 1988 and 1989, according to Greg Kruse, supervisor of the DNR's water-monitoring and surveys unit. American Crystal Sugar spokesman Jeff Schweitzer said the permits were for backup plans the company hasn't been using, so the suspensions will not affect operations.
