REGIONAL— The impact of nearly unprecedented heat in the border country and little to no rainfall over the past week will almost certainly show up in Thursday’s release of the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor. The region has been flirting with drought for months, as a large swath of north-central Minnesota has been in severe drought since the spring. But northeastern Minnesota had generally seen just enough precipitation to avoid official drought status.
That’s now changed, as moderate drought had extended to much of the northern half of St. Louis County, as far east as Tower as of late last week. Further east, virtually all of the Arrowhead was listed as “abnormally dry.” Those classifications were expected to ramp up considerably when the weekly drought monitor update was issued Thursday morning, July 16. That’s after several days of record-shattering heat and drying winds that parched the landscape and spurred the development of massive forest fires.
Those designations came after the line of thunderstorms that moved through the area on July 6, which dropped as much as an inch of rain in some locations but brought little rainfall and numerous lightning strikes right along the Canadian border.
Since then, the region has seen no additional rainfall, and after temperatures reached the upper 90s to low 100s earlier this week, the landscape is increasingly parched.
No real relief appears likely in the foreseeable future. While there are slight chances of small amounts of rain overnight on Thursday and Friday, the ten-day forecast currently offers no other prospects for rain, although more seasonable temperatures are expected to return for the weekend.