By KRISS NELSON

editor@farm-news.com

Recent rain events have helped some parts of the state, while other areas remain extremely dry.

The drought monitor, released last week, according to Dennis Todey, director of the Midwest Climate Hub in Ames shows some D2,( severe drought) and D3, (extreme drought) areas in the state.

“Our initial problem is a carryover from last year in the way of soil moisture,” he said.

Currently some areas of the state are faring better than others.

“Central to northcentral Iowa is a little dry, but probably not too bad, The western part of the state is worse, but the last rain event, we think, has helped into western and southwestern Iowa,” he said. “Northwest Iowa, really has not done well. We didn’t get very much rain in the fall and the snow, that happened was all on top of frozen ground and it’s only now getting to where it is thawed and we get some of the moisture in the soil.”

Weather outlooks

Todey said we are likely to get some decent rainfalls this spring to help with the beginning of the growing season and current conditions should also allow for an early start.

“The dry soils may allow, compared to some previous years, I think we should be able to make reasonably good progress, if not a little ahead of average progress for getting things in the field,” he said.

The concern for Todey, is in the long-term.

“There are hints of warmer and dryer weather more likely as we go into the main part of the growing season,” he said. “That is still a bit far out to say without a lot of certainty, but I have increased my level of risk about dry conditions a little bit because of what we have seen in some of the outlooks.”

For Todey, this causes some alarm for parts of northwest Iowa.

“That really is a concern for the parts of northwest Iowa that still have quite dry soils because you just don’t have much moisture in that bank when things do dry out,” he said.

Although Mother Nature will decide what the weather will be, is there anything we can do?

“We have these things out in front of us that gives us hints there could be some dryness problems, so let’s incorporate that into our decision making and think ahead a little bit,” he said. “That could be a change in some marketing, maybe change plant populations, fertilizer rates or something. It could still be an ok growing season, I just don’t foresee it being a great growing season at this point. We are going to be very reliant on on-going rainfall and that can happen.”

With dryer soils, Todey anticipates deeper root depths, which will be helpful in extracting whatever moisture is available, however.

La Nina or El Nino?

Todey said we are currently in a La Nina, but possibly not for long.

“We are supposed to go out of La Nina this summer,” he said. “Some of the things we are seeing in the outlooks act like the atmosphere is still thinking there is a La Nina around. We are still trying to figure that out.”

Computer models that are used for long range outlooks, however are showing some odd consistency, according to Todey.

“We are not exactly sure why, but we are not getting overly concerned about that yet,” he said.

Moving forward, Todey said the Midwest Climate Hub will be keeping a close eye on the outlooks and will be working with Extension partners and Justin Glisan, the state climatologist and will be providing updates as they are made available.