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Corn Belt weather conditions vary as harvest approaches
Weather conditions are variable as harvest approaches across the corn belt.
Eric Snodgrass is the principal atmospheric scientist at Nutrien Ag Solutions.
“Some of the driest places in the corn belt—parts of Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Nebraska— were so dry in June, July, and the front half of August and there were some parts of Iowa at the end of August and the beginning of September that picked up a foot of rainfall,” he says. “I’m questioning how much did that improve or hurt the crop.”
He says the eastern corn belt saw fewer moisture and temperature extremes.
Snodgrass says he’ll be watching the ‘Bermuda High’ in the next month.
“We get into harvest and we’re all going to worry about if the crop will dry down in the field or are we going to have to pay to have it dry down and we have to watch the Bermuda High,” he says. “The Bermuda High should be over Bermuda. If it moves over the east coast to Nashville, for example, then we’re talking about ring of fire precipitation that comes around the edge and that could hit from Texas and Louisiana all the way through Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana.”
He says farmers could see some untimely rains between mid-September and mid-October if that happens.
Brownfield interviewed Snodgrass during a recent tour at the Nutrien Ag Solutions Innovation Farm in Champaign, Illinois.
Audio: Eric Snodgrass
