Drought conditions have continued to expand over the last week in South Dakota officials say the drought is currently expected to get worse before it starts getting better.
Since last week the drought in South Dakota has expanded throughout the state with little rain to help lessen its effects. Travis Tarver is a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Aberdeen. He says drought conditions have worsened across the state with the northern part of the state seeing the worst of it.
"The biggest change was the expansion of the D3, or the extreme drought, across the north central South Dakota. You know currently it does include the counties of Corson, Dewey, Walworth, Campbell, Potter, a litle bit of Sully and kind of the western fringes of McPherson, Edmonds and Faulk. But we have seen an expansion this week and D3 area goes all the way up into North Dakota as well," says Tarver.
Tarver says no precipitation is expected until Monday. He says even if rain does occur Monday it will not have a major effect on the overall drought.
"That chance of rain that we have on Monday, you know, it doesn't look like a real widespread type of rain event just kind of these typical summer time, you know, afternoon/evening thunderstorms. You know if you're lucky enough to get under one of these thunderstorms you might get a little relief. But overall we don't see conditions improving anytime real soon," he says.
Tarver says temperatures are expected to reach into the low 100's this weekend and into next week. He says there are currently no heat advisories in effect.
