Increasing Departures

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Since the first of April, perhaps one of the driest locations in the state is Oelwein (NE Iowa). This area was generally free of drought this year up until recently as shown by the featured chart of trailing day precipitation departures and analyzed US Drought Monitor underlain. The departures have quickly increased over the past two months and some large deficits have accumulated. At first inspection, you may wonder how the 91 and 120 day departures continue to decrease while the 31 day departure has not. This is sort of a quirk of the analysis as the accumulated precipitation departure possible in absolute terms over 31 days is much smaller than that over 91 or 120 days. You can generate this chart in terms of standardized departure on this website, which helps to normalize the values.

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