Light rain is moving into central Iowa this Sunday evening, and rain chances will last into Monday evening. However, rainfall amounts are expected to be light, as seen above.

The Drought Monitor, published this past Thursday, puts most of eastern Iowa in extreme drought, and a good chunk of central Iowa in severe drought. The coming system will do little to alleviate these conditions.

We’ve seen no rain so far this month, and it’s been 18 days since the Des Moines International Airport has recorded precipitation. The last time we saw an inch of rain or more was on October 26th (1.26″), the last time we saw a 2″ soaker was on July 12th (2.09″), and the last time Des Moines recorded 3″ or more was October 1st of 2019 (3.59″)!

The image above from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet shows negative precipitation anomalies across much of central and southern Iowa for October and November.

This IEM image shows us liquid precipitation anomalies since January 1st.

All of this has left us about 4″ short on soil moisture in much of Iowa, as seen above in this image from the Climate Prediction Center.

Unfortunately the impending rainfall constitutes our only rain chance in the 7-day forecast.