Wednesday, October 21, 2009
If one were to draw a line from near Wichita to south of Kansas City to north of St. Louis to Peoria to south of Chicago and then eastward along the Indiana/Michigan and Indiana/Ohio borders, the harvest has largely shut down once again to the north of that line given rains that have fallen over the past 24 hours. None of the activity has been real heavy (most significant rains have been over northeastern South Dakota so far) but it does not take much to stop the harvest (given how wet it is and how wet the crops are). There is also a fair amount of drizzle in the northern and western Corn Belt this morning that radar is not showing, and certainly that can be enough to halt harvesting. Areas in the eastern Corn Belt and Delta that are still able to harvest right now will continue to do so through early tomorrow, but rain will spread into those areas for tomorrow. This storm system looks to eventually produce at least a half inch of rain over basically all of the Corn Belt and Delta, but plenty of spots will get more than an inch and some places will get two to even three inches. Beyond that, the forecast looks roughly the same as it did yesterday, with a weather system of October 25-26 producing mostly light amounts of precipitation (and poor drying conditions for anyone that does not get that precipitation) and a more significant system for October 28-29 (though one can find models extending that threat well into October 30). Temperatures do not look real notable over the next week but will average below normal. A more intense cold wave is suggested to move into central and eventually eastern parts of the Nation for October 28 through the opening couple days of November. The bottom line is that this is not a very good forecast coming up for corn, soybean, and cotton harvesting operations that have been severely curtailed already by late maturation and way too much rainfall/snowfall. There is going to be an awful lot of acreage that gets harvested this year in the month of November.
