After a prolong period of excessive rain across most (certainly not all) of North Dakota, precipitation this past week was below average for much of the state.
Because summer rainfall usually comes with thunderstorms that tend to produce widely variable rain totals, the NDAWN sites do not always capture all of the precipitation events perfectly. The following image is a representation of observed precipitation via the Advance Hydrologic Prediction Service (AHPS) wing of the National Weather Service (NWS). This gives you a better view of some of the precipitaton missed in Morton and Grant Counties missed by our rain gauges in that part of the state.
Unfortunately, the rain that did fall generally came from thunderstorms that produced severe weather. Saturday, July 5, was the day with day (and night) with the most severe weather reports.
The hail (and to some degree wind) caused crop damage. Hardest hit were locations near the North Dakota / Manitoba border north of Langdon.
Temperatures during the last week were generally near climatological normals, meaning GDDs were normal through the past week, meaning the overall slight deficit of GDDs for the season continues.
Projection for next 7 days is for near normal or slightly above normal temperatures Thursday through Saturday. Then below to well below average temperatures Sunday into next week. More on that on my blog posted early this morning, but below is the 6-10 day outlook for temperatures from the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and as you will read about on my blog, it is hard to argue against this scenario.
Daryl Ritchison