Drought continues to make things challenging in farm country. Ryan Martin is an agricultural meteorologist from Warsaw, Indiana, who says the week ahead doesn’t include much moisture in drier areas. There’s not much relief in sight for the Corn Belt.
“You’re going to be dry basically all week long. From west to east, you have an upper-level ridge developing in the central and northern plains, and it will encompass the western Corn Belt, but basically, we steer action even away from the eastern Corn Belt as we move on through the later part of the next week. So, I’m putting together five to six fully-dry days over the entire Corn Belt. I do think we see a little moisture in the eastern Corn Belt late next weekend, Saturday night through Sunday, but that’s mostly in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. That’s probably all we’re talking about for moisture there.”
The Plains states are going to stay dry as well. “Dry there all the way through. You know, we just got done dealing with a little bit of moisture down in the Central Plains over the weekend, and that’s sagging southward into Texas, Oklahoma, as we go through the first and middle part of the week here, but generally the entire Plains is underneath an upper-level ridge, steering action all the way well north into Canada, and not the Canadian Prairies where we really need it for spring wheat. So, the plains, dry and warm: I don’t think oppressively hot, but rather, warm above-normal temperatures by a good ten degrees or so.”
Normal rainfall patterns are ahead for the Deep South region, an area that’s had too much rainfall at times this year. “Deep South areas are looking mostly normal, and honestly, they’ve had too much water down there, and some guys are saying ‘make it stop.’ I think we will see continued normal rainfall through this week and probably next, and so we’re looking at the good rains and no problems, at least in terms of moisture in the Delta and the Deep South.”
The western United States will continue to struggle with drought in the days ahead. Martin says the weather patterns haven’t brought much in the way of relief to farm country over the past month. “No, not today at this point. The only place we can say a little bit of relief, yeah, I recall the last time we were talking that we were talking about Michigan being abnormally dry in some areas and popping up on the Drought Monitor. We’ve, I don’t want to say completely fixed that, but we’ve alleviated some of the driest areas in Michigan. But as far as the plains go, and particularly the hotspots in North Dakota, northern South Dakota, northern Minnesota, and up into the Canadian Prairies now, nothing has changed there. As a matter of fact, North Dakota, you can make the argument, has gotten worse.”
