A second winter storm within a week is affecting the state as of Friday (12/29).  The previous event over the Christmas weekend set records for amounts of liquid precipitation in the southeast part of the state.  This event will produce a somewhat similar situation with the potential for a significant amount of liquid precipitation in the southeastern part of the state.  The central part of the state seems to be most under the gun currently with some freezing rain and snowfall the big issues.  Check the most current forecasts and conditions at:

http://www.weather.gov

This precipitation will somewhat help the dry conditions in the southeast.  Since this is falling on mostly frozen ground, much of the precipitation will run off.

A relatively quiet fall for weather looks to be coming to an end over the next two days (12-19 and 12-20).  A winter storm is currently heading.  Winter storm watches are posted across the state as of 9 AM 12-19.  Primarily snow in the west and the potential for ice exists across the eastern part of the state.  This is still a fluid situation.  Current forecasts should be checked regularly at http://www.weather.gov.

Dennis Todey  

While some rainfalls have dropped some minor amounts of rain across the state (some isolated places up to 0.75"), heat and low humidities will remove what little recovery these brought and further stress crops.

More fires have started over the Black Hills and will continue in the near term.  Some relief may come in cooler temperatures by the middle of next week.

Extreme temperatures occurred over much of South Dakota over the weekend.  Most locations in the state had high temperatures above 100 F.  Many daily high temperature records were set.  There were also 12 locations that set or tied all time record highs at that location (all were along or west of the river).

The most significant may be the report of 120 F northwest of Usta in Perkins County.  If this verifies, it would tie the state all time record high temperature from Gann Valley on July 5, 1936.

Fires continue to spark from thunderstorms across the state because of the hot, dry and windy conditions.

Because of the quickly worsening drought conditions, the Climate Prediction Center released a new drought outlook last Friday.  These are usually only updated once a month.  This special update was because of the presisting and spreading of the serious drought conditions in the Upper Plains states. 

U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook.

With little rainfall and temperatures nearing 100 later this week across much of the state, little improvement will be seen.

The new US Drought Monitor was released yesterday http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor/html. 

Agricultural conditions continue to worsen across much of the state.  Strong winds and low humidities have added to the dry surface conditions to spawn many fires in the last few days in the north central part of the state in Corson, Dewey, and Walworth Counties.  Two also occurred in the Black Hills.

Conditions continue to deteriorate over the central part of the state with expansion of the the D3-D1 areas in the state because of continuing dryness.  A review of precipitation in the Corson-Dewey-Warlworth County areas indicated less than 4" of rainfall over much of this area since January 1.  That is about 40% of average for the year.

During the last 7-10 days several storms have produced moderate rainfalls and some severe weather across the state (including large hail, strong wind and a couple confirmed tornadoes).  Most of the rainfall associated with these has been fairly narrow and isolated.   Thus, little drought change has occurred.  The main effect has been to relieve some potential stress on crops in the eastern part of the state.