Drought — Southern Lake, Minnesota

2023-09-01 to 2023-09-12 · Southern Lake, Minnesota

Event narrative

September began with a small area of D2 Severe Drought across the southwestern corner of southern Lake County. Lingering dry conditions from August led to the expansion of D2 Severe Drought across all of southern Lake County with the update on the 5th. A heavy rainfall event on September 11th led to the removal of D2 Severe Drought from southern Lake County with the update on the 12th. Another heavy rainfall event occurred later in the month resulting in rainfall of 4 to 7 inches above normal for the month. This helped improve the area to D0 Abnormally Dry by the end of the month.

Wider weather episode

Drought conditions persisted across northeastern Minnesota to begin September with D3 Extreme Drought stretching from the Brainerd Lakes area into the I-35 corridor. Two heavy rainfall events impacted the region during the month leading to many areas receiving 200 to 300 percent of normal rainfall for the month, especially in areas seeing the worst of the drought conditions. This led to drought improvement across much of the region with D3 Extreme Drought becoming confined to northern Cass County by the end of the month as much of the North Shore and Arrowhead improved to D0 Abnormally Dry.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1141274. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.