After a spring and summer of wet conditions throughout almost the entire state, drought is returning to Missouri.
About 10% of Missouri is now classified as abnormally dry, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a map that tracks drought and updates weekly.
“We hadn't had a week in July or August with a map that had no (drought) since 2019, so it was almost kind of rare to have that little drought concern across the whole state for what we see there,” State Climatologist Zack Leasor said. “But if you look at the past 30 days, there are some spots that are starting to dry out.”
Most of the dryness is appearing in the southern part of the state. While the map as only recorded dryness in the state for about a week, Leasor said he thinks some areas, particularly in the southeast Missouri Bootheel, have been drier for longer.
As state climatologist, Leasor is tasked with drafting recommendations for Missouri’s weekly drought assessment. When he was in the region last week, he saw drier conditions than what the Drought Monitor had been reflecting. That’s because drought assessment involves a variety of factors – including rainfall, streamflow and soil moisture – and there’s some data gaps in the Bootheel.
“(The Bootheel) is really characterized by high concentration of agriculture, but also it's characterized by really cheap access to groundwater that recharges quite frequently,” Leasor said. “So as a result, you have a lot of irrigated agriculture.”
By irrigating their land with more water, farmers can cause the data obtained from soil gauges to be unreliable, Leasor said.
“In addition to that, the Bootheel doesn't have a lot of natural hydrology,” he said. "When we talk about lakes or river systems there, a lot of it is kind of engineered, so not a lot of stream monitoring.”
Leasor is involved in a project to install more soil moisture gauges across the state through a collaboration between the University of Missouri and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
