SOUTH BEND —
The rain that has fallen on northern Indiana for eight of the past 13 days hasn’t been enough to get South Bend out of a severe drought.
Weather officials say it will take weeks of rain to overcome months of dryness, and that’s true for the rest of the state as well. Almost all of Indiana is in some form of drought, and one-fifth of it is in the worst stage.
Conditions aren’t expected to improve in the next month, either. The long-term forecast for August calls for above normal temperatures and below normal rainfall, said Al Shipe, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis.
“This drought is not short term,” added associate state climatologist Ken Scheeringa. “This drought is probably going to go on at least a few more months. It’s not going to be any quick fix where you get a series of rains and it’s done.”
The U.S. Drought Monitor classifies drought into four stages, from moderate to severe and then extreme and exceptional. The portion of the state listed as being in extreme drought is in a band moving diagonally across the state from northeastern Indiana to the southwest. Almost 19 percent of the state, in an area running north from southwestern Indiana into the western and central part, is experiencing an exceptional drought, the worst sort.
The federal government has declared a natural disaster in 64 Indiana counties.
While South Bend has received 2 inches of rain more than usual in July, and Fort Wayne, 70 miles to the southeast, got a little more rain than usual, other cities remain dry.
Terre Haute in western Indiana is more than 4 inches below normal for the month, receiving just less than a half-inch of rain. Indianapolis and Bloomington are more than 3 inches below normal, and Lafayette is more than 2 inches below normal.
For the year, though, most Indiana cities are far below normal. Bloomington is almost 16 inches below, Terre Haute is almost 14 inches below, and Evansville is more than 13 inches below normal. Shelbyville is a foot short on rain, and Indianapolis is more than 9 inches below normal.
Scheeringa expects most of the state to get normal amounts of rain during the next two weeks, but he said that won’t help much.
“Normally it’s an inch a week. That will barely keep up to even,” he said. “So we’re thinking no improvement, but probably not getting any worse, either.”
The rain in the past two weeks probably came too late to save corn crops, but may have come just in time to save some soybeans in the South Bend area, said Phil Sutton, Purdue Extension educator for agriculture and natural resources in St. Joseph County.
“It’s not going to be bumper yields, but it’s not going to be disaster out there,” he said.
Weather officials say probably the best cure for the drought will be the changing of the seasons, because the days get shorter in the fall, the crops are harvested, and the temperatures go down.
“And usually the rains will increase a little bit,” Scheeringa said.
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