North Africa Dryness Whittled Down To SW Morocco
By Drew Lerner
Kansas City, January 23 (World Weather Inc.) – La Nina driven dryness in parts of North Africa during the autumn and early winter has been slowly diminishing with the demise of La Nina conditions. Heavy weekend rain in northwestern Algeria wiped out a large region of lingering dryness and previous rain last week did the same for some northern Tunisia and northeastern Algeria locations, although some of those were not all that dry to begin with. Recent rain in northern Morocco helped to ease dryness there and today’s soil assessment has suggested that the only wheat production area that is still lacking moisture is southwestern production areas of Morocco.
Rainfall over the past week was most significant in north-central Algeria where some important production areas are located The region received 4.00 to 8.00 inches of rain in the seven-day 
period ending at dawn today. Rainfall in other areas across northern Algeria into northeastern Morocco ranged from 0.88 to 2.00 inches with local totals of 2.00 to nearly 5.00 inches. The wet bias in this past week has done a terrific job in easing dryness just ahead of the usual start of aggressive crop development in February.
The one region that remains drier bias today in northern Africa is in the southwestern production areas of Morocco and additional rain is needed in the region to reduce concern over a slow start to the spring growing season because of dryness.
The rainy January has been quite impressive and some flooding has likely resulted. Wheat production areas in northern Algeria and Tunisia have reported many times more rainfall than normal. Some areas have reported four to more than six times the usual rainfall for 
the first 23 days of January. Drying is needed to protect some of the winter crop that may have recently been subjected to some possible flood damage. The sandy soil in the region should drain quickly and winter crop conditions are likely to improve at a steady rate.
The latest soil assessment shows adequate to abundant topsoil moisture in most of the wheat production areas in northern Africa and the prospects for additional rain in the coming week to ten days are relatively good.
Adequate subsoil moisture in many areas suggests crops will be able to get through a short term period of dryness without worry over development. With that said, there is need for more rain in both southwestern Morocco and interior portions of northeastern Algeria.
North Africa is most known for its Durum wheat crop and the images below show where most of that production takes place. Timely rain will be needed through March and into April to support the best crop development and production potential.
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