After a year of record precipitation for South Dakota back in 2019, the state saw calmer weather for 2020. As weather experts explain, this year has been less severe.
Todd Heitkamp is the meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service office in Sioux Falls. He says most of 2020 was defined by dry conditions and a lack of severe weather.
“We've been dealing with a wet weather for so long that it seems like a distant memory since the last time that we've dealt with dryer conditions like this, but that it helped with the combining, harvesting of the crops to get them out without too much of a worry,” Heitkamp says. “But now as we set the stage for 2021, we'd like to have a little bit more moisture in the ground this time of year than what we're currently seeing.”
According to the state weather network station Mesonet, soil moisture this year has gone down 12 to 15 inches compared to last year. State climatologist Laura Edwards says that change has led to drought.
“We’ve really seen that dryness really amplify into drought and a lot of areas for the year to date since January. The driest areas of the state are the southeast and the northeast. If you look along the Highway 12 corridor, say Edmunds County over to the Minnesota line, those have actually shown the largest differences from normal precipitation for the year so far.”
Meteorologist Todd Heitkamp says chances of precipitation are low for the rest of December. He says cold temperatures and dry conditions will continue for the first few months of 2021.
-Contact SDPB reporter John Nguyen by email.