REGIONAL— Don’t look now, but the North Country is experiencing a dry spell that’s sent river and lake levels tumbling the past couple weeks. The region, which experienced record-setting flooding this past spring, saw plentiful rainfall through much of the summer, which had boosted soil moisture and kept water levels at or above average.
That’s been in marked contrast to much of the rest of the state of Minnesota, where drought has been intensifying the past couple months.
While the North Country has avoided a return to drought, the recent dry trend is beginning to add up, with most area weather stations running about two inches below average on rainfall since Sept. 1. And area rivers are now running below their October Q75, which means that flow is lower than at present only 25 percent of the time. On the Vermilion River, for example, the flow had dropped to 164 cubic feet per second (cfs), slightly below the Q75 threshold.
The Little Fork River’s flow fell twenty percent over just the past week, falling to 179 cfs, well below October’s Q75 mark of 211 cfs.
While there are moderate chances of rain and snow over the weekend, extended forecasts call for only negligible amounts of precipitation. The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center is forecasting below normal temperatures and precipitation in both the 6-10 day and 8-14 day forecast issued Monday, Oct. 10.