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Meteorologist says expect wet but different spring

An ag meteorologist says it will be a wet spring, but not the same as last year. 

Eric Snodgrass with Nutrien Ag Solutions says, “Technically, we were wetter a year ago at this point than we are right now, but that’s not to say that things are dry by any stretch of the imagination.”

Snodgrass says the weather patterns coming into spring 2020 are different than they were entering 2019, and so is the location of moisture. “It was much more targeted over southern Wisconsin, Iowa, southern Minnesota getting back over into Kansas and Nebraska, and then again over the Ohio River valley.”

Snodgrass says farmers will again need to pay attention to changing weather patterns. “That’s an important thing to be thinking about, especially if we’re intending on planting 94 million acres of corn as we just learned, and what this might mean towards that planting progress.”

And, he says many growers might be forced to take prevent plant. “We’re going to see that those acres that still have corn in them that don’t get harvested from last year by the end of May this year will all be prevent-plant again, and that could be a few million acres, which could be quite important.”

Snodgrass spoke to the Professional Dairy Producers Business Conference Thursday.