Spotty, heavy rain in some places, drought in other areas

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Showers and thunderstorms have brought some locally heavy rain to central KELOLAND this week, but the drought across the west continues to intensify. We’ll take a closer look at the latest conditions.

Depending on what part of KELOLAND you live, we are seeing a wide variety of conditions across the region as we head into the last week of August. Here’s a closer look.

First, the drought is getting worse in far southwestern South Dakota. We now have extreme drought shown in the red for portions of the central Black Hills. Heavy rain did fall in portions of the northern Hills early in the week, so the story varies over short distances in western KELOLAND.

Full marathon canceled due to high heat

This map shows those heavy rains closer to Spearfish and Sturgis. Other storms have produced much more moisture around Pierre, where locally over three inches has fallen this week.

That factor alone has bumped up our 30-day trends around central South Dakota. This map also shows another trend. Look how dry it has been in much of southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa the past 30 days. While subsoil moisture is plentiful, the top soil could use some rain.

The patterns of hot weather this weekend will break down early next week and may deliver some storms to those drier areas east of Sioux Falls