The Fastline Blog

Monday, November 9, 2009:

Combines were rolling all across the Plains, Corn Belt and Delta throughout this past weekend, and for most of those same areas it will be a while before harvesting is shut down again for any real length of time. Later today through early tomorrow could feature a band of rain across eastern Kansas, northern Missouri, southeastern Iowa, and northern sections of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, but rainfall amounts and coverage there look light. Ida will be making landfall tomorrow (my guess is that it will be down to tropical storm strength at that time, though currently there are hurricane warnings posted for the coastal areas of Mississippi through the Florida panhandle), but it is tracking far enough east that the bulk of the Delta will be spared the rain from that system. Largely dry weather is forecast for Wednesday through Friday, though by Friday there will be some rain chances in the northern Plains and the far northwestern Corn Belt. More widespread rainfall chances look possible for the second half of the coming weekend through early next week, though there are huge model differences on how that weather system will evolve so I have no opinions yet on rainfall amounts and who might get the rain/who might miss the rain.

My guess though is that particularly big amounts with big coverage will not be seen, and I also doubt that system will mark the start of a return to the wet conditions that we saw in October. There is certainly a lack of cold air in the forecast for the next two weeks as well, and this comes after a very warm weekend that featured scattered record highs being set in the Plains and extreme northern Corn Belt. While it looks warmer than normal throughout the Nation’s midsection for all of this week, clearly it will be the northern Plains and northwestern Corn Belt where the warming is the most dramatic. Temperatures in those areas this week will likely average more than 15 degrees above normal, with Wednesday and Thursday being the peak of that warmth. It will cool a bit for the weekend, but the northern Plains and northwestern Corn Belt in particular look exceptionally warm again next week (certainly lessening chances of major snowfall events in those areas any time soon!). For this afternoon’s harvest progress report, I would look for the national soybean harvest to be 75 percent done, with the corn harvest at 36 percent complete.

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