How much did snowstorm improve Minnesota's drought situation?

What a difference one big spring storm can make! About one third of Minnesota that was in drought a week ago, no longer is.

Last week’s drought monitor had 74% of Minnesota in drought. Now? We’re down to 43%. It’s still a significant chunk of the state, but it’s not often that large of an area changes that much in a week.

The comparison with last week is substantial. All of the metro had been classified as moderate drought and now all of the metro is out of drought. North central and northwest Minnesota was just grazed by the last storm and remains in moderate and even severe drought.

Of note also are the southeasternmost counties of the state. They remain in moderate and even severe drought.

Lake Minnetonka has gone up almost three inches just from this storm but is still half a foot lower than it’s more recent maximum last May, which was at the end of our wet winter and spring flooding.

This most recent storm dropped more than 2 inches of liquid equivalent precipitation (2.32 inches at MSP). It was the wettest multi-day period since late September when we had those miracle rains that took a bite out of the summer drought. Note however that northwest Minnesota got much less.

Year to date precipitation anomalies (departure from normal) are actually in the green (surplus) for the Twin Cities and southeast Minnesota. North central and northwest Minnesota remain dry, year to date.

Of course running a surplus at the end of March, year to date, isn’t saying a whole lot. We carry over a deficit of 1.88 inches from last year and a staggering 8.60 inches from 2022, etc.. The last above normal year was 2019, which was our wettest year on record with an incredible 11.60 inches above normal. The fact that we now have a total deficit of 6.23 inches over 5 years says a lot about the recent half decade big picture. It’s been dry. Very dry.

So, while we’ve had some good moisture, we need to keep it up through spring and summer or we’re quickly in trouble again. Most of the models right now show a slight edge to normal or slightly above normal precipitation the next three months. The official Climate Prediction Center outlook gives us ‘equal chances’ of above or below normal precipitation for April-May-June, which largely reflects this.