SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — It’s no secret that this year has been pretty dry across much of KELOLAND. What we need is a good soaking rain.

While we’ve seen scattered thunderstorms put out a lot of rain, these bursts have been concentrated to smaller areas. Even then, this does little to nothing to help out the bigger deficit that has impacted nearly every corner of KELOLAND.

The last time Sioux Falls recorded at least one inch of rainfall in a single day was on June 18th. That was 47 days ago. For Aberdeen, it was June 9th, which was 56 days ago. Rapid City’s last one-inch day for rain was June 4th, two months ago to the day. Pierre goes back even further than that…exactly three months ago!

That’s not to say that appreciable rainfall has been completely absent in KELOLAND. We’ve seen several instances of half-inch rainfall across the region, including two last month in Sioux Falls, but these occurrences have been few and far between.

Those two instances I mentioned earlier accounted for 1.6 inches of total rainfall. That was nearly 75 percent of the total rainfall observed last month in Sioux Falls.