New drought maps are out

It was another late night or early morning wake up call for some of you. I know leaving work last night the lightning was pretty impressive. One loud bang of thunder had Millie running to the car; she didn't waste any time looking for toads outside of the station.

24 Hour estimated amounts

24 hour estimated amounts

We ended up with some very heavy rainfall yesterday evening around Hays. I'm posting radar estimated totals from that area because there is a bulls-eye near the town of Ellis where some places may have had 4-5 inches of rain. A second area of heavy rainfall setup just east of Medicine Lodge. All of the recent rainfall has impacted the drought, and while we are not out of it yet, we don't have "exceptional" drought in any areas of Kansas any longer. I thought the map would look even more different than it does this week, but the best way to get completely out of drought is to have timely rains stretched out over several weeks. What has happened this week is a bunch of rain all at once, causing a lot of runoff and flooding. Even though we could benefit from some dry weather now to allow for the wheat harvest, let's hope the rain doesn't stop in the long term. There are still several areas that need it.

Drought monitor. Last week is on the right.

Here are rainfall totals ending at 7 a.m. this morning around Kansas:
Wichita: 0.59"
Salina: 0.41"
Dodge City: 0.37"
Garden City: Trace
Hays: 2.15"
Goodland: 0.01"
Hill City: 0.08"
Russell: 1.17"
Concordia: 0.62"
Newton: 0.29"
Medicine Lodge: 0.94"
Pratt: 0.32"
Elkhart: 0.09"
Hutch: 0.27"
Winfield: 0.87"
Jabara Airport: 0.91"