The Fastline Blog

Friday, November 20, 2009:
There are some low clouds and fog in parts of the Corn Belt here early on this Friday, but that should burn off pretty quickly and overall the weather for today and tomorrow looks pretty nice for the region. We will see conditions start to go downhill again for Sunday with clouds [...]

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Thursday, November 19, 2009:
At times in recent weeks we have seen the soybean market express concern about dryness in Argentine growing areas, and some soybean production forecasts for that country this week have dropped below 50 MMT because of that dryness. One wonders if this concern was not a bit hasty, as we have seen [...]

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009:
Substantial amounts of additional rainfall have been recorded since yesterday morning across far southeastern Iowa eastward through northern Illinois and northwestern Indiana; radar is suggesting that amounts in that area have been on the order of 0.50-1.50″. Some additional rains will fall in that area over the next two days, but at [...]

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009:
At various times during this growing season I have compared conditions this year to those that we saw in 1992, given that we had a cool summer that year, we had late maturing crops, and we had a corn crop that was hit by a freeze in some areas before it was [...]

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Monday, November 16, 2009:
Two solid weeks of close-to-perfect harvesting weather came to an end late in this past weekend, with substantial amounts of rain (and some snow) for the central and southern Plains, the far western Delta, and in the Corn Belt for especially Missouri, central Illinois, northern Indiana, and far southern Michigan. Radar is [...]

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Friday, November 13, 2009: Friday the 13th Edition
The weather that the Nation’s midsection has seen since October 31 has been nothing short of amazing, particularly when you consider how radically different it has been versus the six-week period prior to that date. I think that everyone in the Midwest and Delta will remember this year’s [...]

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Thursday, November 12, 2009:
South American weather is normally at the forefront of grain traders’ minds by the middle of November, though that is not the case this year given that the U.S. harvest is so late. Still, I thought I would take a break from U.S. weather this morning to brief you on what has [...]

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009:
Some parts of the Corn Belt, Plains and Delta have gone without rainfall since October 31, and some of those same areas will remain free through the end of this weekend to give them as many as 16 straight days of completely dry weather to thus allow for massive amounts of the [...]

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009:
Last week was easily the biggest week of this fall season for harvesting soybeans, and this week will likely be the second-biggest. At 75 percent done nationally, that was a 23 percentage-point rise from the previous week but still left this year’s pace well behind last year and the five-year average (and [...]

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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 [...]

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