The forecast calls for rain off-and-on for the next five days in Central Illinois. That's significant because the area has had so little rain for a while.
Heading into the last weekend of summer, the Bloomington-Normal area has had rain one time in the last month [Sept. 4], according to data from state climatologist Trent Ford.
The lack of rain has led to moderate drought for nearly all of McLean County. The far southeastern tip of the county is in severe drought, along with Champaign-Urbana and eastern Illinois.
Ford says the Mackinaw River is running low enough that it could hurt plant and animal life in and near the water.
“Even though it’s only been extremely dry for the last 30 days or so, many of these rivers that are actually pretty sizable … that’s certainly the Mackinaw and Sangamon [rivers], are dropping pretty substantially,” Ford said.
It's been so dry, McLean County has banned open burning until next Friday due to the elevated fire risk.
Ford says farmers now in the harvest season need to be especially careful.
“There’s a lot of fuel, now humidity, high temperatures, that’s ripe for fires,” Ford said. “There’s an extremely high risk of field fires.” He advises farmers have a plan of action if a fire ignites while working in the field.
The Bloomington-Normal area is down 7 inches of precipitation below average [23 to inches] this year. The Peoria area is about 9 inches drier than usual [20 to 29 inches].
Ford says one stretch of rainy days alone won't get the area back to normal.
“We’ll need to continue to see setter patterns for the rest of this year and for much of the winter to really call an end to the drought conditions we are seeing,” Ford said.
Ford says it's too soon to ask for water conservation, but if dry conditions continue for another week, that could change.
