Drought in Northern Illinois

Extremely dry conditions this fall have pushed the northern half of the state in moderate to severe drought. Drought impacts and condition reports are critical as drought conditions evolve in coming weeks. Please consider reporting what conditions look like in your area using the CMOR system: go.ilinois.edu/cmor.

Current Conditions

The remnants of Hurricane Helene mostly relieved drought conditions in southern Illinois in late September. However, following the laws of conservation, drought migrated to northern Illinois. Precipitation has been very hard to come by since the start of September in much of northern Illinois. Several places, including Dubuque and Freeport, have had a top 5 driest start to the fall on record. Freeport, specifically, has gone 23 consecutive days with no rainfall. Much of the northern half of the state has had less than 50% of normal precipitation since mid-September, and a few spots have had less than 10% of normal (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Precipitation over the last 30-days ending on October 17th, expressed as a percent of normal.

The U.S. Drought Monitor has greatly expanded moderate and severe drought in northern and central Illinois in response to the recent dryness. Roughly 40% of the state is in at least moderate drought (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Drought infographic for Illinois, including the October 15th US Drought Monitor map.

Drought Impacts

Agricultural impacts from our current drought situation include deteriorating pasture conditions and problematically low grain moisture levels as harvest continues. The dryness does help progress a timely harvest; however, dry conditions also increase fire risk in fields and adjacent ditches.

This is the time of the year when we typically see the lowest streamflow levels around the state, and the recent dryness has pushed levels and flow well below normal in many streams. The Illinois River is approaching near record low levels in several places including Marseilles. The Mississippi River has returned to low levels after a bump from Helene. Tower Rock on the River is now walkable from the Missouri side.

Drought impacts and condition reports are critical as drought conditions evolve in coming weeks. Please consider reporting what conditions look like in your area using the Condition Monitoring Observer Reports system: go.ilinois.edu/cmor.

Outlooks

The next 7-days will remain dry across Illinois; however, there are some signs of some moisture return in to the Midwest as we move into the final week of October (Figure 3). At least some rain would be beneficial to tamping down dust and fire risk and maybe steadying some river levels.

Figure 3. Week 2 precipitation outlook for October 25-31 from the Climate Prediction Center: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/.