It has been a hot summer so far, and with another northward flip of the jet stream starting today, June 27, the month of June will certainly finish considerably warmer than average. It has also been dry, except for where it has been wet.
Seriously, June will finish among the rainiest on record across northwestern Minnesota. A few strips of east-central North Dakota are wet as well.
However, across most of our region, the thunderstorms have not produced enough rain to keep up with evaporation rates in the warmer than average weather, leaving the topsoil dry while lawns and crops thirst for rain. As has been repeated here before, one cannot tell if one is in a drought until one has been in a drought for a while, but the seeds of drought are there. As hot days fill the extended forecast, we will need to get lucky with some of the scattered thunderstorms or the dryness will become a drought before summer ends.
