This feature continues the series of comparing how the drought this growing season stacks up with previous years. For this metric, an estimated areal coverage of Iowa is presented that had a previous thirty day period with less than two inches of total rainfall received. This arbitrary metric attempts to show the breadth of dry continues and how it changed over the period. The top chart presents the daily coverage for this year and four previous years of note. In this comparison, 2012 shows up much worse than 1988 in late July, but better in late June. The middle chart presents the simple average of the value over the June and July period and 2012 has the highest value around 60% since the year 1900 followed closely by 1988. The bottom chart looks at this value during a key period for corn development in mid-July. 1936 is easily the largest average coverage as shown by this metric. So the question remains unresolved, how does this year compare with previous drought years? Is it worse than 1988?

Voting:
Good = 53
Bad = 14

Tags:   2012   1955   1934   1936   1988