It has been dry across the entire KVOE listening area for just about a month, and a sliver of the KVOE listening area is now abnormally dry.
Far west Chase County near Elmdale and Cedar Point is abnormally dry, according to the US Drought Monitor. Abnormally dry conditions extend west into south-central and western Kansas, with a pocket of moderate, severe and extreme drought in southwest Kansas.
Rain that developed late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning was the first widespread rainfall for the KVOE listening area in just under a month, and there was a wide range of rain reports:
*KVOE studios: 1.4 inches
*Emporia Municipal Airport: 0.17 inches
*East Emporia: 0.50 inches
*West-central Emporia: 2 inches
*Allen: 0.30 inches
*Bazaar: 0.70 inches
The rain came too late to adjust the Drought Monitor’s latest report. The weekly reporting periods end on Tuesdays.
Dry conditions have developed as part of an extremely wet year to date. So far, the KVOE studios have picked up 55.78 inches of rainfall. The record at KVOE is 65.24 inches in 1973. The Municipal Airport, the National Weather Service’s official reporting station, is at 41.3 inches for the year. The average yearly total to date is 34.53 inches.
