Ag Weather Forum

A week of warm and dry weather was just what the Central U.S. needed to recover from recent heavy rain. Satellite images suggest that soils have dried out nicely for most areas outside of the far southwestern Plains in areas like southeastern Colorado and west Texas, where soils still have more moisture than normal.

Producers that have had to wait to get back out into their fields to harvest, cultivate, sow winter crops, or do other jobs across their operations have had some time to get back out there. But another disruption to that process is about to move in and will combine a cold front, a system riding along it and some tropical moisture to produce potential for heavy rain.

Harvest has fallen behind schedule for corn and soybeans, mostly in the Corn Belt, which has pushed back other fieldwork as well. The NASS Crop Progress report scheduled to be released Tuesday afternoon may showcase some vast improvement in the harvest progress, but producers should only be catching up to the normal pace after being delayed significantly in recent weeks.

A hurricane in the Southeast didn't help progress either. Wet weather over the last month has degraded quality and caused issues with sprouting and mold as seen in several instances by producer posts on social platform X. Read more in "Grain Quality Concerns Rise for Corn, Soybeans": https://www.dtnpf.com/…. The dry weather was welcomed, helping to stall growth of diseases that could reduce yields and quality further.

The dryness also came with some extremely warm air. Over the last weekend, temperatures soared into the upper 80s and lower 90s from Texas all the way to central Minnesota. Some records have been broken for daily highs as well as the latest 90-degree day on record in areas like Minnesota.

The heat continues across the Eastern Corn Belt Tuesday where the latest 90-degree day may occur for areas like Indianapolis and Cincinnati.

All that heat is ahead of a cold front that has pushed down through the Central Plains and Great Lakes, which extends from Kansas to Michigan early Tuesday morning. Behind the front, colder temperatures continue to build across the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest, dropping highs approximately 30 degrees from where they were prior to the front's passage. This cold air led to the first snowfall of the season for parts of western and central Montana, with several areas near the Rockies seeing accumulations over 6 inches.

That sharp cold front will be a mechanism for producing scattered showers and thunderstorms over the next few days. A system in the West, which produced widespread precipitation across that region over the weekend as well, will move slowly eastward for Tuesday and Wednesday. It will draw up tropical moisture from Hurricane Simon off the coast of Mexico. While the hurricane itself will not move through the region, moisture that has moved northward into northern Mexico will be drawn up into that front, producing widespread showers and thunderstorms Tuesday evening and Wednesday from west Texas up into Illinois. The system itself will move into the Plains on Wednesday and make for more widespread showers and thunderstorms in the Plains on Wednesday and Thursday, and across the Midwest on Thursday and Friday. The zone from west Texas into Missouri is forecast to receive the most precipitation, getting hit a couple of times, adding up into the 2- to 4-inch range.

Some areas are likely to eclipse these totals when hit by multiple rounds of heavy thunderstorms, though some areas will likely see less in that zone from being missed. With these areas only just recovering from heavy rainfall, another round could put producers back inside for several days. Flooding will be a possibility. And those areas that already have high streamflow and flooding in eastern Kansas and Missouri will likely see flooding worsen for a time.

Elsewhere across the Plains and Midwest, rainfall amounts around an inch or less are generally expected from Colorado and Nebraska over to Ohio and Michigan.

Some minor disruptions to harvest and other fieldwork are likely. But after the system moves through, another stretch of drier weather is forecast through the middle of next week. Another storm system may move through again with widespread precipitation, though models are still working out the details with that system. The extended dry stretch should help those areas that see rain over the next few days recover yet again.

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

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