MOLINE, Ill. — Moderate to severe drought continues to grip the Quad Cities region as we go from an unusually dry spring to a scorching and dry start to the summer season. This brings up a great question: What is the longest stretch of dry days in the Quad Cities? Let's dig in.
Defining dry days
For this case, we'll define a dry day as observing no precipitation, including rain and snow. When referring to a stretch of dry days, we'll consider this to be the consecutive number of dry days back-to-back.
For the month of June 2023, we've had 13 consecutive days in the Quad Cities featuring no measurable rainfall, with 12 consecutive days before this back in May. The combination of these two, and the lack of overall heavy rainfall has pushed our region back into moderate and severe drought status. While this may seem extremely unusual, it isn't anywhere near the records that have been set in the past.
The most prolonged period of dry weather was back in 1952 with a whopping 45 days straight of dry skies followed by 40 days back in 1944. Most recently, in 2013, 36 consecutive dry days were observed during the late summer months.
One interesting thing to note is that many of these dry periods were observed during the late summer or fall seasons, rarely ending up as the result of a dry spring. We observe much of our rainfall for the year during the months of May through August for reference.
So, while the drought is impressive right now, it isn't the worst we've seen, or even close to being one of the worst we've seen in past history.
Keep in mind we only have official weather records for select cities in our region. There are likely some areas that have a much longer dry streak than the one mentioned above.
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