City leaders in Storm Lake, a rural community of 11,000 in northwest Iowa, are asking residents not to wash their cars or water their yards and gardens during the hottest time of the day. The city has also cut back on watering public recreation areas such as ball fields and golf courses.
These are extremely unusual steps in a situation that is usually full of water and even prone to flooding. But rain in Iowa, along with the rest of the Midwest Corn Belt states, has been mysteriously absent this spring, plunging the region into drought.
“It's something new that residents have never really had to deal with before,” said Keri Navratil, Storm Lake's city manager.
As California and much of the Western United States unwind from drought conditions after a spectacularly wet winter, the Midwestern states have fallen victim to a dry, heat wave that could have devastating consequences for the world's food supply.
“America's Breadbasket” — the vast fields of corn, soybeans and wheat that stretch from the Great Plains to Ohio — didn't get enough rain to keep the crops growing, which feed a significant part of the region's economy, including food , animal feed and ethanol production. The region last experienced a significant drought in 2012 and previously in 1988.
Although experts have not directly linked this event to climate change, scientists have warned that climate change will lead to more summer droughts for the Midwest in the coming years.
An unusually dry spring and summer-like heat have delayed crops, forced water conservation measures and lowered water levels in major waterways, which could prevent barges from carrying goods downstream.
Even after a wet winter, California is preparing for the next drought
Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson has declared drought alert to help counties affected by these dry conditions. City leaders inside Oak Forest, Illinois; Wentzville, Missouri; and Lincoln, Nebraskahave called on residents to limit water use.
The region's drought conditions are unusual and worrisome, said Dennis Todei, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Midwest Climate Hub, which provides scientific analysis to the region's agricultural and natural resource managers. This is the fourth consecutive year of significant drought for much of the Midwest and Great Plains, he said.
“We're getting to a point where we absolutely need to start getting precipitation over the main Midwest core,” he said. “We're coming to a very troubling time here.”
That drought should not happen, he added, especially with the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather event in which surface water temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean rise, causing wetter and warmer global weather. The Midwest doesn't have that humidity.
Instead, a high-pressure system — which usually means sunny, calm weather — has been parked over the region, preventing the precipitation needed for healthy crops and waterways like the Mississippi River. The frequent storms typical of spring, fueled by moisture in the Gulf of Mexico, did not occur.
The majority of corn and soybean production in Iowa is rainfed and right now we have none.
– Mark Licht, associate professor at Iowa State University and expert in cropping systems
Although “strange,” this weather pattern has not yet been linked to climate change, said Trent Ford, the Illinois climatologist who collects and analyzes the state's climate data.
“It's just extremely dry,” he said. “That's why I said it's weird. It's kind of this random weather pattern that's been established and it's just either persisting or I guess it's evolved in a way that keeps this part of the country very, very dry.”
Parts of Illinois have received only about 5 percent of normal precipitation this month, he added. Several places in the state should see 10 more inches of rain than they've gotten since April. Cities in the Chicago area are experiencing their driest spells since 1936. Major rivers in the state, such as the Illinois and Kankakee, are at record lows for this time of year.
Nearly 60 percent of the Midwest, which includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin, is experiencing moderate drought, according to the US Drought Monitor, which is run jointly by the federal government and the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Almost 93% of the area is abnormally dry, with about 16% of it suffering from severe drought.
The public was asked to conserve water in the Platte River watershed, which includes Omaha, Lincoln
In the Great Plains states of Kansas and Nebraska, the situation is much worse. A quarter of Nebraska and 38% of Kansas are in extreme drought. More than one-tenth of Nebraska and 8% of Kansas are in extreme drought — the most severe stage of the screen. The Great Plains has been in drought conditions for more than a year, although it has received some rain in recent weeks.
The region's drought couldn't come at a worse time from an agricultural perspective, said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and author of the U.S. Drought Monitor report. Although the arid conditions are worrisome, he said, there is still time for the region to recover.
“It's still very young in the year, and if you look at the intensity of the drought it's not high yet,” he said. “Obviously, if it doesn't rain in the next few weeks, that will change. We're really watching how that plays out.”
These dry conditions have led to depletion of topsoil and subsoil moisture, meaning less water in the soil to support crop planting and growth. In addition, the drier conditions led to a massive browning of grasses and pastures, forcing farmers to buy more feed, rather than rely on grazing.
This is a critical time for farmers as they approach the reproductive stage of crop growth, when corn begins to silk and soybeans begin to flower.
Mark Licht, associate professor and cropping systems specialist at Iowa State University, recently walked the fields of a northeast Iowa farm that planted its soybeans after spring rains. Those soybeans lacked the moisture to germinate and emerge, he said, which has become a common problem across the state.
The state has not had good rain since early May. The rain that fell in the state was “effective and patchy”, not providing enough rainfall to sustain crops, he said. Soybean and corn plants are smaller than expected, with insufficient canopy development to protect the soil from weeds and prolonged sunlight, which are harmful to crop growth.
There is still some time for crops to recover if the rain returns. But if it doesn't rain by the time Iowa's corn crop begins to pollinate in a few weeks, its corn will have fewer kernels, raising prices for cattle owners who may have to look to alternative feed sources.
“We're in a situation where we basically need very timely rains to get this crop through,” Licht said. “The majority of corn and soybean production in Iowa is rainfed and right now we just don't have it.”
Recent rains in Kansas and Nebraska have helped the wheat crop in those states, said Justin Gilpin, CEO of Kansas Wheat, a wheat grower advocacy group. But for other parts of the wheat-growing Great Plains states, it wasn't enough.
“For a large part of Kansas,” he added in an email to Stateline“drought improvement and rains are a little too late to help the wheat crop.”
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