By Drew Lerner
Kansas City, October 18 (World Weather Inc.) – Eastern U.S. Midwest wheat areas are facing additional rainfall over the coming week to ten days causing some new delay to planting and raising concern about field and crop conditions in Michigan, Ohio and northeastern Indiana. Crop conditions elsewhere in the eastern states will remain favorable with good field progress prevailing, despite some brief periods of rain. Summer crop harvesting in these areas will be equally impacted by the waves of rain delaying field progress in some areas more than others.
Rainfall resumed in the central and eastern Midwest during the past week slowing field progress in some corn, soybean and wheat producing areas. The impact on field progress was not very great except in parts of Ohio and Michigan where fieldwork was already beginning to drift behind the usual pace because of previous rainfall in late September and earlier this month. Weather conditions improved for a little while across the region and temperatures back in those days were warm so that evaporation occurred quickly after rainfall allowing fields to dry for resuming fieldwork.
Two new waves of rain will impact the eastern half of the nation over the next eight or nine days possibly resulting in some additional delays in fieldwork. The wetter weather this time around will be accompanied by colder temperatures and that will leave the moisture in place for a longer period of time resulting in longer drying times before fieldwork can resume. That raises some concern over the success of summer corn and soybean harvesting for a little while as well as additional wheat planting.
Many areas in the Midwest are not rated too wet right now and that will help some of the coming week of rainfall to soak deep into the ground without causing much “ponding” of water in low lying areas. However, the rain will work toward saturating the soil in many areas and that may lead to longer delays. The situation is not just going to impact the eastern Midwest, but portions of southeastern Ontario and Quebec, Canada will also experience the wetter biased conditions resulting in delays to fieldwork there, as well.
The U.S. Delta and portions of the southeastern states are not nearly as moist as parts of the eastern Midwest and will absorb what rainfall comes in the next week without having much of a lasting impact other than short term delays in field progress.
Rainfall over the past 30 days has been significant in portions of the eastern Midwest, but much of that was due to the large cutoff low pressure center that impacted the region in late September. Weather conditions were improving somewhat earlier this month, but the coming week will likely produce a set back in the drying trend and resuming field progress.
Overall farming activity has advanced relatively well in recent weeks with aggressive soybean harvesting occurring in the last days of September and early October. Soybean harvesting advanced 18% in the week ending Sunday while corn harvesting moved along 14% from that of the week ending Oct. 9. Most states in the Midwest, Delta and southeastern corner of the nation were advancing a little faster than usual on fieldwork, but corn and soybean harvesting were behind the usual pace in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan – the very same states that will receive some of the greatest rainfall in the next week. Wheat planting was most behind the usual pace in Ohio, but some areas in Indiana and Michigan were also behind the usual pace.
The two greatest periods of rainfall will occur Wednesday and Thursday of this week and again Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. Confidence in next week’s rain is a little low for now, but some moisture is expected to fall at that time. The latest soil assessment as of Monday suggested most of the Midwest was not too wet, but that will change with the bigger rains coming up in the next two days in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.
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