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Weather experts comment on dry Midwest, delayed Brazil planting

Weather experts say a La Nina pattern is likely to bring dryer-than-normal conditions to much of the Midwest for the rest of the year.  

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center drought expert David Miskus tells Brownfield, “With the decline of the La Nina and the ongoing drought right now, things are not looking too good for any kind of excess precipitation for the next three months.”

And, Miskus says the La Nina pattern might have a larger impact on the southwestern United States since they are already dry and have a forecast for a dry winter. 

Meteorologist Eric Snodgrass with Nutrien Ag Solutions agrees there will be less precipitation for the remainder of the year, and says the dry weather and some frost is causing crops to dry down faster than normal in many areas.  “It’s going to be one of those things where we see the harvest pace just shoot through the roof here, you know, this week and next week and as we work our way into October.”

Snodgrass says most farmers are fortunate during this year’s early dry down because of their early start.  “We made it through getting those GDU’s (growing degree units) pushing that corn crop pretty quickly, and the frost that did come through, you know, it hit more of the far western edges of the corn belt and then the northern corn belt.”

Snodgrass says the La Nina weather pattern bringing dry conditions to the Midwest probably won’t mean a dry spring.  “In the Midwest, it is rare when you look back historically, a drought lasts more than two seasons.”  He tells Brownfield the first part of winter might be milder for some.  “What we’ll probably see from this La Nina will be what we would call a late onset of winter, so the chances of us being drier and maybe slightly warmer than average through fall and through early winter is likely.”

But, Snodgrass says not to bet on the entire winter’s weather based on the La Nina.  “Even in winter, the correlation between La Nina and our weather pattern is at best about point-3 to point-4, so it’s going to play a secondary factor to what the north Pacific jet stream is going to do.”

On the other side of the equator, Snodgrass says the La Nina weather pattern continues to slow down planting efforts in South America.  “Concerns with La Nina tend to be in southern Brazil and in Argentina later, so I think we could have more of a market story developing in South America this year.  This is the first time in a while we’ve seen a La Nina of this size.”

Snodgrass tells Brownfield the soil is different in the growing regions of Brazil and Argentina, and they need a lot of moisture before they can plant.  “We’ve already seen a delay in the return of the Brazilian monsoon, which means that they could have started planting that soybean crop a week ago, the problem has been that they’ve got to wait on those rains to come back to really get going aggressively on it, so there might be a little bit of a delay in the early planting.”

Snodgrass says water drains from their soil so quickly that they need the normal three-to-five weekly inches of rain to get a good crop.

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