Bob Gabriel Sr. woke Monday to a rainy, gloomy day. And the rural Eudora farmer couldn’t have been happier.

“This is just a tremendous blessing,” said Gabriel, 57, as he welcomed the daylong drenching of his wheat and corn fields.

Area farmers are thankful for the recent rainfall, though the total amounts are still below season averages. Monday at his farm south of Eudora, Bob Gabriel Sr. wasn't complaining about not being able to plant corn because of the rain. Its great," said Gabriel as he watched the rain fall outside his barn. "Its

Monday’s rain was the most significant precipitation in the area since a late January ice storm dropped 0.87 of an inch, according to records kept by Weather Data Inc. in Wichita. In all of January only 1.7 inches fell. Just more than three-tenths of an inch fell in March.

“Everything needed a drink, and it didn’t matter what you grew,” said Bill Wood of the K-State University Research and Extension office in Douglas County.

Precipitation has been scarce in the Lawrence area this winter and early spring, but some parts of Kansas have been even more parched.

Kansas is coming out of its 28th driest winter since 1895 with the state averaging about 66 percent of normal moisture in the seven-month period between September and March, state climatologist Mary Knapp said.

But those statewide numbers do not come close to reflecting the misery in parched western Kansas, particularly in the southwest, where precipitation during those same seven months has totaled just 38 percent of normal. Such conditions could trigger activation of the state’s drought response team, a move that would allow pumping from reservoirs and other actions.

Scientists at Kansas University on Monday named 13 counties in south-central and southwest Kansas as having taken the brunt of the drought. The winter wheat crop has been hurt in Barton, Ford, Gray, Greeley, Harper, Haskell, Kingman, Pawnee, Pratt, Reno, Stafford, Stanton and Summer counties, the scientists said.

The counties were identified through the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing program, which uses remote sensing technology, weather maps and satellite images to measure drought damage.

If current conditions persist, farmers may abandon their winter wheat crops in favor of summer crops, said John Lomas, a remote sensing researcher.

“If we get some more moderate temperatures and some good rains in these areas in the next few weeks, some of it can recover,” Lomas said.

Crops in the Lawrence area can still do well if the weather reverts to a normal spring pattern, Wood said.

“If we could have an inch of rain every week, that would be great,” Wood said.

Scott Whitmore with the National Weather Service in Topeka said continuous cold fronts from the north have shut off slow-moving, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico that is needed to feed spring rains.

“The moisture has been slow to get back up here before the next cold front,” Whitmore said. “The cold fronts have dried the air out.”

Farmers weren’t the only ones welcoming Monday’s rain. Rural firefighters have been on the run battling grass and field fires the past several weeks. In March alone, rural departments responded to 66 fire calls outside Lawrence. This weekend, firefighters responded to nine field and grass fires throughout the county, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office reported.

“It’s just been really crazy,” said Eudora Fire Chief Spencer McCabe. “In my eight years in fire service in Douglas County, I can’t ever remember it being this bad.”

The rain caused cancellation of a downtown Lawrence parade to honor the Kansas University’s men’s basketball team. The parade won’t be rescheduled.

Moisture could return Thursday, when the weather service is predicting a 40 percent chance of rain.