Feast or Famine: A Nation Split in Two by Rain

Over the past 30 days the country’s midsection has been hammered by repeated deluges — capped by a 1-in-1,000-year flood in Missouri — while the West withered on a fraction of its normal rainfall and dryness crept back into the Carolinas.

There has been no such thing as average rainfall in America lately. Over the 30 days ending July 11, one in six U.S. counties — 555 of roughly 3,100 in the Lower 48 — received more than one and a half times its normal rainfall, and 151 counties took in better than double. At the same time, 246 counties got less than half of what they normally count on, and 87 received under a quarter. The middle of the distribution, the place where rainfall is simply ordinary, has been squeezed nearly out of existence.

The dividing line is stark on the map below. From the central and southern Plains through the mid-Mississippi and Ohio valleys and into the mid-South, blues dominate: Kentucky led all states at 164% of its normal 30-day rainfall (7.82 inches against a norm of 4.77), followed by Connecticut and Rhode Island at 157%, Mississippi at 150, Illinois at 149 and Louisiana at 147. At the county scale the excesses are extraordinary — Avoyelles Parish in central Louisiana logged roughly four times its normal month of rain, and Pulaski County at Illinois’ southern tip nearly did the same.

West of the Rockies the map reads like a fire warning. Washington state managed just 38% of its normal 30-day rainfall, Arizona 43%, Nevada 62 and Oregon 67. California and Utah each sit at about 24% — and while midsummer normals are small in California’s dry-season climate, the same cannot be said for Utah, Colorado’s high country or the northern Rockies, where this is the wet-thunderstorm season that failed to show up. A disappointing start to the Southwest monsoon has left most of Arizona and New Mexico well short, and the U.S. Drought Monitor now shows severe to extreme drought blanketing much of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico, with large wildfires burning in Colorado and the city of Bend, Oregon, shutting off water deliveries to some customers as supplies ran low.
 

Percent-of-normal precipitation for June 12 – July 11, 2026, computed from NOAA/NWS PRISM data via the Applied Climate Information System. County shading compares each county’s 30-day total with its 1991–2020 average for the same calendar window.

The wet side of the ledger has not been gentle rain. On July 1-2, slow-moving storms dumped more than eight inches across southeastern Minnesota — Mabel recorded 8.28 inches — in what the state climatology office classified as its first “mega-rain” event since 2020. Then, on Friday, July 10, a stalled complex of storms produced six to twelve inches of rain in less than 24 hours across south-central and southeastern Missouri, a rainfall the National Weather Service characterized as a 1-in-1,000-year event in spots. A gauge near Redmondville measured 12.25 inches. The Black River near Annapolis crested at an all-time record 28.73 feet, hundreds of water rescues were carried out, more than 200 children and counselors were airlifted by National Guard helicopters from Camp Taum Sauk in Lesterville, and one woman, swept from her home in Crawford County, was found dead. Governors in both Missouri and Kentucky declared states of emergency.

The weekend kept the tap open — in exactly the same places

Rainfall through the weekend piled onto ground that was already saturated. As the map below shows, the heaviest axis set up from southern Illinois and the Missouri bootheel across western Kentucky and Tennessee — the same corridor soaked by Friday’s floods. County-average totals for Saturday and Sunday (through Sunday morning’s observations) reached 4.42 inches in Jackson County, Illinois, 4.18 in Randolph and 4.13 in Johnson counties, 3.33 inches in Crittenden County, Kentucky, and about three inches in Perry County, Missouri, and Greene County in East Tennessee, where flash-flood warnings stretched through the weekend. In all, 329 counties averaged an inch or more for the weekend, and flood watches covered parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and southern Illinois into Sunday night, with forecasters posting rare high-level flash-flood risks for the region.

And the dry side stayed bone dry. Essentially no rain fell all weekend in California, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Washington or Idaho, and most of the northern Plains and upper Midwest saw nothing measurable either — welcome news for flood-weary southeastern Minnesota, but another rainless stretch for the drought areas of the Dakotas and Nebraska.

Weekend rainfall totals for Saturday, July 11 and Sunday, July 12, 2026, from NOAA/NWS observations via RCC-ACIS. Daily observations end at roughly 7 a.m. local time, so rain falling later Sunday is not included.

Drought is retreating in the middle, digging in at the edges

The national drought ledger reflects the same tug-of-war. As of the July 7 Drought Monitor, 47.2% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought — down sharply from about 62% in mid-May, thanks almost entirely to the repeated soakings from Kansas and Oklahoma through the mid-South. Arkansas, northern Louisiana, Kentucky and Tennessee all saw widespread improvement in recent weeks. But 30% of the country remains in severe drought or worse, 11% in extreme drought, and the pockets left behind are hardening: the interior West’s deficits are now measured in seasons, not weeks. 

Meanwhile a new problem is emerging on the East Coast — short-term dryness has returned to the Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia, where South Carolina managed just 73% of normal rainfall over the past 30 days and North Carolina 85%, and water restrictions have appeared in parts of Virginia and North Carolina.
 

For agriculture, the geography has so far been kind where it counts most. The heart of the Corn Belt is running near or above normal — Iowa at 115%, Illinois 149, Indiana 133, Nebraska 105 and Ohio 104 — with soil moisture broadly favorable as corn moves through pollination, though the same storms that built those surpluses have drowned out low spots and delayed fieldwork from Missouri through Kentucky. The watch areas are the northwestern belt — Minnesota (92%), South Dakota (93) and North Dakota (94) tilted just below normal — and the Plains wheat and cattle country farther west, where the Climate Prediction Center’s outlook for the coming week favors hot, dry weather across the northern Plains and West even as more rain targets the Gulf Coast and, mercifully, the Carolinas.

Where the past 30 days stand out
 

State-average rainfall for the 30 days ending July 11, 2026, versus the 1991–2020 average for the same window (PRISM via RCC-ACIS), and county-averaged weekend totals through Sunday morning, July 12. States ranked by% of normal.
 

The pattern behind the pattern is a stubborn summer jet that has parked itself across the nation’s midsection, repeatedly training Gulf moisture along the same west-to-east corridor while ridging keeps the West hot, dry and increasingly combustible — a setup consistent with the strong El Niño backdrop that has also suppressed the Southwest monsoon’s opening act. Until that steering pattern breaks, the forecast is more of the same: too much water for places that cannot absorb another drop, and none at all for the places that need it most.

Methodology and sources: 30-day precipitation and 1991–2020 comparisons computed from NOAA/NWS PRISM 4-km analyses aggregated to county means via the Applied Climate Information System (RCC-ACIS);% of normal compares June 12 – July 11, 2026, totals with the 1991–2020 mean for the identical calendar window. Weekend totals are county means of NOAA/NWS gauge-based analyses for the observation days ending Saturday and Sunday mornings. Drought statistics from the U.S. Drought Monitor (July 7, 2026). Event details from the Minnesota DNR State Climatology Office, National Weather Service, and news reports (CNN, NPR, Fox Weather, The Watchers).