Weatherwatch.

Across the northern Plains, rain and snow showers were insufficient to significantly boost soil moisture, leaving soils cool and dry heading into May. PHOTO (COLOR) Farther east, however, the same storms were able to tap into abundant moisture while traveling northeastward across the nation's midsection, leading to drought-easing rain and snow in central sections of the Rockies and Plains, multiple rounds of heavy rain and severe weather in the Southeast, and periodic Midwestern storminess. Unlike two years ago, when ice jams and surging river levels in the wake of a mid-March powerhouse storm resulted in flood damage exceeding $10 billion across the middle Missouri Valley, flooding from similarly intense weather in March 2021 was sharply limited by antecedent dryness and unfrozen soils, which allowed much of the rain and melting snow to soak in. Heavy rain, or rain changing to snow, fell on the 10th in portions of the upper Great Lakes region, where daily record precipitation totals reached 1.25 inches in Marquette, Michigan, and 0.97 inch in Duluth, Minnesota. [Extracted from the article]