According to today's Drought Monitor report of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in the midwest, almost the entire region was cooler than normal for the week with departures of 2-4 degrees widespread.
Conditions were mainly drier than normal throughout the region with the driest conditions over Minnesota, Iowa, southern Wisconsin, northern and central Illinois, Indiana and southern Michigan.
Central Missouri, southern Illinois and western Kentucky were the wettest areas, with some of these areas having well over 200% of normal precipitation for the week. Changes were mixed with improvements in the south for those areas that had the best rains and degradations farther north.
Minnesota had moderate drought expand in the northwest with severe and extreme drought expanding in the central and southern portions of the state.
Wisconsin saw severe drought expand in the northwest and west central with some expansion of extreme drought in the south. Moderate drought was expanded over northern Iowa and northern Illinois with abnormally dry and moderate drought expanding over western and central Illinois.
Southern Illinois was the recipient of some of the extreme rainfall and some areas saw two-category improvements this week.
That same extreme rainfall allowed for two-category improvements over western Kentucky, and portions of northern Kentucky had abnormally dry conditions eliminated.
A new area of moderate drought was added over eastern Kentucky. Improvements to abnormally dry conditions occurred over northern and southern Ohio and northwest Ohio into Indiana.
Indiana had some expansion of moderate drought in the northern portion of the state.
Missouri had a mix of improvements and degradation as the northern and southern regions saw drought expansion and intensification while the central and southeastern portions had widespread improvement. Exceptional drought was removed from Missouri this week.