Over the past week, it was great (for some) to see rain make it s way through the area and the State of Michigan. It definitely was not enough to get us out of the drought which continues to become a problem for gardeners and landscapers looking to keep everything looking nice.
Depending on where you live in the Battle Creek area, there was anywhere between .65 inches (northern Battle Creek) to .41 inches of rain (at the Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field). The total amount of rain in the month of May concluded with 1.01 inches, almost 3 1/2 inches less than average for the month based on the last 25 years. On top of that, we are now short of eight inches of precipitation below normal.
It has become a common theme over the last three weeks that the lack of precipitation for our area is starting show on many plants and tree do to drought stress.
Bob Coward, the co-host of the Garden Show on WBCK, talked about how the drought monitor for Michigan may not be entirely correct. While working on several projects over the past week, Bob said that the soil is almost a thin dust there needs to be a large turnaround to avoid severe drought conditions. If you see the map below from the U.S. Drought Monitor, the only improvement from moderate to abnormal drought (brown to yellow) were in areas that saw precipitation over the past week - the Northern Lower Peninsula and the southern border counties of Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe in the Southeast region. On top of that, the Battle Creek area has received just .41 inches of rain (not even a half-inch) through May 16