The image above is a plot of the past 30 days of rainfall. The turquoise color represents areas where less than an inch of rain has come. Click on the image to see it up close. (Thanks to the National Weather Service Quad Cities for sharing the image.)
A stripe of very dry conditions exists from Southern Minnesota through the northeastern half of Iowa into North Central Illinois. While there will be some relief in the coming days, it remains to be seen whether we can begin to make up for the lack of rain.