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Drought continues to expand, rain chances increase next week

A climatologist says yield outlooks are favorable despite an expansion of drought conditions over the last few months.

Eric Hunt with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln says, “Iowa is generally above average,” he said. “Illinois is expecting extremely good yields this year. We’re still projecting relatively good yields for Indiana even though we’ve at times been fairly dry. Kansas is kind of all over the place.”

He says soil moisture levels have been declining. “Across a lot of eastern Nebraska into western Iowa and into Missouri, we’ve seen upwards of 50 percentile drop in soil moisture in the top one meter of soil. We’ve seen things dry out pretty quickly here.”

Hunt says short term outlooks show elevated chances of precipitation for the Western Corn Belt next week.