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Climatologist says wet weather could delay harvest weeks, possibly months

The director of USDA’s Midwest Climate Hub says farmers will need patience this fall as repeated rainfall continues to cause harvest delays.

Dennis Todey tells Brownfield, “What has happened now is going to affect us from a soils and harvest perspective for several weeks, if not a couple months at this point.”

He says a stationary weather boundary has divided moisture conditions across the Corn Belt for much of the growing season.

“From eastern Nebraska, southeast South Dakota over to Ohio has had heavy rain recently and several other times this growing season,” he says. “But outside that, areas to the north, Minnesota, Wisconsin, parts of Michigan, parts of Missouri, southern Illinois, and far southern Indiana have been drier.”

Todey says wet conditions have brought relief to some drought-stricken regions.

“Some of this heavier rainfall has been a benefit because it did fall in areas that were very dry soils, especially parts of the Central Plains, Southwest Iowa, up in Wisconsin, that helped out,” he explains. “It’s also helping out the Mississippi River.”

He says the slow pace of harvest is likely to show up in the next crop progress report.

“I expect to see little or no progress through that central corridor of the Corn Belt because of the repeated rainfalls and even between the rainfalls just it’s wet and cloudy, so you’re not able to dry out very well,” he says.

Todey says the forecast during the second week of October is expected to be the driest window for farmers.