Drought conditions likely to continue through summer

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) - We all know that it’s dry outside. And, we are all hoping for some good rain and soon. However the summer outlook isn’t looking very promising.

Typically the spring is where we get a good chunk of our moisture for the growing season. On average, May is our wettest month, with July and June not far behind. However, we are in a pretty big hole and that will be hard to dig out of.

As of Wednesday we were 5.2 inches below average on precipitation for the year. It would take an extremely wet June and July to get those numbers back to average. The other thing to think about is evaporation. In a typical summer, more water will evaporate from the surface than will fall from the sky. This is due to the much warmer temperatures. So even if we were to get some good rain, it will still be a struggle for the crops.

"Fort Wayne was 5 inches below normal for the season" said Courtney Obergfell of the Northern Indiana National Weather Service . "If you look back the deficit for the year is larger than that. So you're going to need a pretty wet period of time to make up for what we've had."

So what can we expect this summer? In a perfect world we would hope to see a good chance of a wet summer. However this is not the case.

For the meteorological summer months of June, July, and August there is an equal chance to see above, below, or near average conditions. This simply means that there isn’t anything going on in the atmosphere that will influence our weather in one direction or the other. Even if we were lucky enough to have an average summer season in rain, it still wouldn’t make up for the huge loss this spring.