Is the snow impacting Minnesota's drought?

MINNEAPOLIS – There is zero shortage of moisture on the ground right now, right as it's most needed below the surface.

Liquid or not, relief is now just a waiting game. 

Pete Boulay is a climatologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

"This is probably what the doctor ordered to help us kind of ease back in the drought a bit," Boulay said.

Has our snowfall impacted the drought at all?

"It's helping out a little bit, but by no means is it getting rid of the drought," he said. "We just don't get a lot of precipitation in the winter, and also it's not going in the ground right now."

There has been some improvement over the past several weeks. Comparing a drought map in early October to the most recent one, extreme drought has scaled back some, and that's not including the record snowfall from last week that's now at the whim of above-freezing temperatures.

"The ground isn't very hard, the frost is shallow, so depending on what happens the rest of month of January into February, how many January thaws do we get, we could meter some of this kind of frozen moisture into the ground," he said.  

While collecting a sample of the 15-inch snowpack with Boulay, we learned the ground below is surprisingly soft enough to push a ruler into it, thanks to the thick snowpack insulating it.

Boulay says that 15-inch sample eventually melted down to nearly 3 inches of water. It's like an ankle deep puddle, just waiting to quench the ground's thirst.

"We have a big deficit to make up, so we have a long way to go," he said.

A slow spring thaw is ideal since it would give the ground time to soak it up. A fast melt could cause flooding, but the water might then runoff into rivers and streams where it's needed.