Region has endured some historic droughts

By Tom Emery

This summer has been drier than normal in parts of the region. Fortunately, it’s nowhere close to the historic droughts that have hammered the region.

One of the worst was in 1953-54, when much of the Midwest was parched amid one of the most brutal heat waves on record. Rainfall in some areas in 1953 was as much as sixteen inches below normal. In Missouri, 1953 is the driest year on record, with a statewide average of 25.35 inches.

It was especially severe in the Alton area, where the Alton Telegraph reported that rainfall in the region was nearly 25 inches below average for 1953 and 1954 combined.

Those two years rank in the top 10 driest on record in Springfield, Ill., as 1953 is third all-time with just 23.98 inches, over 13 inches below normal. Not far behind is 1954, in ninth with 26.67 inches.

Coupled with remarkably high temperatures, residents suffered a double blow. The sweltering heat was at its worst on July 14, 1954, when many locales in central and southern Illinois went over 110 degrees.

That day, the mercury hit 117 in East St. Louis, the warmest temperature ever recorded in Illinois. Elsewhere on July 14, top temps in the Missouri towns of Union and Warsaw were 118, an all-time state high.

Not all of Illinois struggled with drought in 1954. According to the National Weather Service, Chicago experienced its seventh-wettest year on record at 45.92 inches, over nine inches above normal.

As the nation grappled with the Depression two decades before, Midwesterners also had to contend with miserable heat and abysmal rainfall. The summer of 1936 remains the hottest on record in the United States, and was the driest in Missouri history. A meager 3.78 inches fell in parts of the Show-Me State in June, July, and August.

The drought was hardly contained to the Midwest, as years of below-average rainfall in the Plains helped contribute to the Dust Bowl. Some of that dust blew into Illinois and Missouri, particularly a dark cloud that blanketed the area in dirt on May 10, 1934.

In many towns in Illinois, the 1930s produced daily record highs on 40 to 50 of the 92 days of meteorological summer (June, July, and August).

Many Midwestern cities endured as many as 16 straight days or more of 100-degree temperatures in August 1936, including Springfield, Ill., and Kansas City, where citizens resorted to sleeping on park benches, desperate for relief from stiflingly hot living quarters in a time before air conditioning.

To the north in Moline, Ill., the mercury hit 100 or above for 11 straight days from July 5-15, 1936.

At least 13 states from New Jersey to Louisiana recorded their warmest-ever temperatures during 1936. An estimated 4,500 to 5,000 deaths nationwide were attributed to the heat that summer.

Drought conditions also wracked the region in 1980, leaving some towns, like Carlinville in Macoupin County, Ill., with alarmingly low water supplies.

In 1988, the Midwest was gripped with even more severe heat and dryness. That year, the village of LaBelle, Mo., hit an all-time low for precipitation in the state, with a meager 14.97 inches. More recently, a searing heat wave in July 2012 brought an extended period of below-average rainfall.

This summer’s rainfall deficit breaks a string of abnormally wet years in precipitation in the region. NWS records show that Springfield, Ill., recorded above-average annual rainfall in seven of the last eight years from 2015-22.

The NWS also reports that St. Louis has been above average for rainfall in nine of the last 10 years, especially in 2015, which was the wettest year on record in the city, and 2019, the fifth-wettest.

Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or [email protected].