Bob Roden is looking at the sky and praying for rain.
Last week, the farmer from Roden Echo Valley Farm near West Bend in Washington County said that without rain, his crops might last three or four more days.
But despite the tantalizing promise of scattered thunderstorms on Saturday, none of the rain reached Roden's farm. Even worse, there's no guarantee that a good, soaking rain will reach him anytime in the next 10 days.
Southeastern Wisconsin is in a "severe drought," according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and though experts hope it will start to rain soon, the thunderclouds aren't rolling in yet.
Southeastern Wisconsin's place on the drought spectrum
Southeastern Wisconsin has a precipitation deficit of about 6 inches going back to the beginning of March, according to Sarah Marquardt, a service hydrologist at the Milwaukee/Sullivan National Weather Service station.
This extended period of below-normal rainfall causes "meteorological drought," one of the several definitions of drought that led to the U.S. Drought Monitor's "Severe Drought" designation.
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