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Mother Nature forces planting season snow day on Illinois farmers

Photo by Steve Hilberg, Homer Lake, Illinois

The past 24 hours brought snow and freezing temperatures to most of Illinois, pushing the pause button on planting and threatening any crops already above ground.

“It was pretty wild. Snowfall on April 20th is definitely a rarity.”

As reports come in, state climatologist Trent Ford says there was anywhere from trace amounts of snow that has already melted, up to 2 inches that will likely melt by the end of the day. He tells Brownfield farmers danced a fine line with freezing temperatures as they dipped between 26 and 33 degrees. But he says the good news is very few corn and soybean plants have emerged.  

“I would say the biggest impact from this to commodity crops would just be a delay in emergence, germination or planting in general.”

But Ford says because winter wheat, fruit trees and horticulture plants are in later growing stages from warm March temperatures, even a couple of hours below freezing could cause damage, which is possible again tonight.

“There is still a freeze threat tonight for most of the state. After that we do see a warmup on the horizon. Even though the next 7 days are going to be somewhat wet with an inch to an inch and a half of total precipitation across the state we are looking at highs next Monday and Tuesday in the 70’s and maybe even 80’s in some parts of the state.”

Ford expects it was a top 3, if not the record latest snow event for southern Illinois and in the top five for central Illinois but was not uncommon for the northern part of the state. He says these events have been more frequent as Peoria recorded snow on or after April 15th for the last four years.

Interview with Trent Ford

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