It took one storm exactly two days to take eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota from too dry to plenty wet. This is often how it works in spring because of the fact that average precipitation through fall, winter and spring is just not that much.
The six months of November through April produce just a fourth of our average annual precipitation. So if those six months are very dry and we get just half of the average, we can make it up with one good rain storm like the one Sunday and Monday.
Warm season precipitation is the important stuff. If we were to go from May through October with half of average rainfall, the moisture deficit would be more than 8 inches, which would cause much more of a problem and would be much harder to make up.
So the weather picked a good time to go dry this fall, winter and early spring.
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