(Radio Iowa) – State climatologist Justin Glisan says February continued what has been a dry winter. “Preliminary liquid equivalent total, so melted snow, melted sleet in the rainfall that we saw, only about four-tenths of an inch, and that’s about eight tenths of an inch below average,” Glisan says. He says it will end up around the 17th driest February in So if you look at 154 years of records. Glisan says February did not have the snow drought we saw in January.

“Overall, about three-point-eight inches of snow on the ground, so three inches below average. So not exceedingly significant snowfall departures, but overall through winter, meteorological winter, December, January, February, as a state, we’re about eight inches below average,” Glisan says. He says the meteorological winter saw much more snow than last year, which ranked 4th for the least amount of snow on the ground. Glisan says the overall snowfall season was a little behind normal. “Starts in October, runs through May, and we’ve even had snow in June. We still have deficits in snowfall, but not as high as what we saw in meteorological winter,” he says. Glisan says the areas that got less snow, like southeastern Iowa and also northwestern Iowa, saw drought conditions increase.

“Coupled with less rainfall and basically no snowpack on the ground, you deplete soil moisture profiles, topsoil particularly, and that’s where you start to see these drier conditions reemerge,” he says. Glisan says temperatures in February were about seven degrees above normal, which provided the benefit of warming of the top level of soil, allowing moisture to sink in. “We did remove shallow frost. So with that shallow frost removal, we did see infiltration of melting snow, but also any rainfall that we got,” he says. “So at least in the shallow profile, we have seen some improvement, particularly you look at a soil moisture map, bullseye right over central Iowa, where we’re right near normal for soil moisture this time of year.”

Glisan says in the southeast and eastern Iowa, there was less overall moisture and the soil profiles remain dry.