Ag Weather Forum

Wednesday's Climate Prediction Center six- to 10-day and eight- to 14-day precipitation outlooks both have much of the Corn Belt leaning above normal for precipitation for the second half of June. During the past 30 days, a few pockets of below-normal precipitation stand out across southwest Wisconsin, eastern Iowa and northeast Missouri. The extended precipitation outlooks offer a glimmer of hope for these areas that have been dry lately.

Rainfall now will be crucial, given the outlooks for July and August that suggest warmer and drier conditions.

In the near term, a cold front from the Northern Plains will be digging into southern Minnesota, northern Iowa and southern Wisconsin on Wednesday. The front is expected to stall out across these regions into Thursday that will lead to at least a 24-hour period of on-and-off showers and a few thunderstorms. By Thursday morning, there could be some areas of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa that see 1-2 inches of rain. Although, amounts near 2 inches will be isolated.

Later Thursday into Friday, a secondary disturbance will make its way from the Dakotas into Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin. This disturbance has the potential to drop heavier and more widespread rainfall. On Wednesday, the Weather Prediction Center's Day 2 Excessive Rainfall Outlook has much of the southern half of Minnesota and small parts of eastern South Dakota, northern Iowa and western Wisconsin in a slight risk for rainfall exceeding flash flood guidance.

There will be ample moisture to work with as the second wave later Thursday into Friday comes through. Recent European model guidance shows a band of 1-3 inches of rain extending from west-central Minnesota into west-central Wisconsin by Friday evening. The American GFS model has been holding onto a more northerly track with the heaviest rainfall, painting a swath of 1-3 inches of rain from west-central Minnesota into northern Wisconsin. This second system could end up missing much of eastern Iowa that could use more rainfall.

With all this talk of rain throughout the rest of the week, I think of it as both good and bad. On the one hand, we could use the extra moisture with the hot and dry outlook for July and August. However, on my family's farm in southwest Minnesota, we're currently working to get our post-emerge spray on as well as finish rock picking. The wetter forecast will certainly slow us down for a few days, but even looking ahead into the six- to 10-day and eight- to 14-day precipitation outlooks, it appears we'll have to dodge showers to get the spraying done.

Looking ahead to early next week, an upper-air ridge is expected to build in the West and extend into the Plains but there will also be an upper-air closed low near the Hudson Bay, and this may act as a guide to systems from the West or southern Canadian Prairies. On Sunday, some parts of the Dakotas and western Minnesota could be looking at a fairly wet Father's Day. Additional rounds of scattered rain showers and storms will extend into the western half of the Corn Belt come Monday.

After Monday, the forecast gets a little murky on exactly where the rainfall will and won't fall next week. We're also fast approaching that time of the year where we can get more frequent Mesoscale Convective Systems (MCSs) in the Midwest and Plains. An MCS is much larger than individual thunderstorms. They can extend up to a few hundred miles in length and persist for several hours. Squall lines or derechos are specific types of MCSs. The long-range model guidance may be hinting at a few of these MCSs trying to form next week in either the Plains or Midwest, but it's just too far out to say with any confidence whether these systems will come to fruition.

Between the rain expected throughout the second half of this week in the northwest Corn Belt and continued chances for more showers throughout the Midwest and Plains next week, hopefully the drier areas can catch some of the rainfall moving through. An MCS can be notorious for dropping multiple inches of rain within a matter of hours. For the areas that have been drier over the past 30 days, they may welcome the rain, but for those folks that have seen too much, an MCS may lead to a risk for ponding water.

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Teresa Wells can be reached at teresa.wells@dtn.com

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