Ag Weather Forum

The headline for my blog last week mentioned a wet spring and I immediately received some pushback from readers who disagreed. You can read that blog here: https://www.dtnpf.com/….

While it's true we have endured a very wet weather pattern in a lot of areas this spring, the pushback was valid as there have been some areas of the country that are still behind in precipitation going into June.

When looking at the 30-, 60- and 90-day precipitation anomaly maps, many areas east of the Rockies have seen above-normal precipitation. Scattered up and down the Plains across the South, Ohio Valley, and East Coast, this has been almost universal. Depending on the timeframe used, a lot of areas have seen 150% to 300% of normal rainfall in these areas. That has helped reduce the drought -- or at least the impacts of it -- across the northern half of the Plains, Minnesota and Wisconsin; but has also led to massive flooding and severe weather across the South and Southeast. Some areas across the South have been so consistently wet they had more rainy days than dry days over the spring season.

But there is a pocket where this has not been the general case. While showers and storms have moved through from time to time, it has been far less frequent and most often with less precipitation amounts. That area is from the Nebraska-Kansas border region through northern Missouri, most of Iowa, and into northern Illinois and Indiana. These are the folks that provided some pushback to the wet spring categorization and looking at the data from various time scales, they're right.

In fact, prior to this week, the 30- and 60-day anomalies point to rainfall that is roughly half of normal. It hasn't been incredibly dry, but soils have less moisture in them to start the summer season than normal, and these will be areas to consider as the hot- and dry-summer forecast manifests itself throughout the season.

Some of these areas did see beneficial rainfall this week, which is not included in these maps just yet. Parts of northwest Iowa, northern Missouri, and northwest Illinois saw more than two inches of rainfall -- which is certainly welcome. But some areas saw an inch or in some cases in eastern Iowa, much less, and that could weigh on some fields going into the summer.

There is still some hope, though. We have some time in an active pattern that could mean more rainfall for these areas. A disturbance will move through the region with scattered showers Thursday and Friday, June 5-6; a frontal system will spread showers into the Great Lakes Sunday and Monday, June 8-9; and there could be another system or two before we hit the midpoint of June. But models are skeptical about the coverage and amounts of this rainfall and the forecast starts to turn drier after. And according to the forecast posted last week, which has not changed, we could start to run into more drier periods and less rainfall by the time we get into July. So, while a lot of areas are well-stocked with moisture going into the summer, we have significant pockets of the Corn Belt where that is not the case.

To find more weather conditions and your local forecast from DTN, head over to https://www.dtnpf.com/…

John Baranick can be reached at john.baranick@dtn.com

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