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Extreme weather delays some South Dakota planting

A farmer in eastern South Dakota says extreme weather has hit in the last week, with thunderstorms delaying soybean planting on Monday.

“It was a pretty rowdy storm with a lot of lightening, thunder and high winds. It rained really hard and we got some small hail.”

Scott VanderWal tells Brownfield it’s too soon to know if there’s any crop damage, but there’s no corn above V6 growth stage.

“Most of the corn was up pretty good and some was just spiking through, but we’re thankful we didn’t get tornadoes like they have down south.”

USDA says corn planting is 85 percent complete in South Dakota with half of the crop emerged. Soybean planting is 71 percent complete with the crop 23 percent emerged.

He says the crops dodged a bullet with cold temperatures on Sunday morning.

“It was 33-degrees here and was down to 34-degrees already around 2 a.m. We were kind of concerned, but there was nothing we could do about it, of course,” he says. “It must have clouded up a little or something. We didn’t see damage from that, but the hail storm was a curve ball. We’ll have to wait and see what it did.”

VanderWal, who farms in Brookings County, says it will be a few more days before he can resume planting, but it shouldn’t take long to wrap up.

USDA says sorghum planting is 35 percent complete in South Dakota and sunflower planting is 7 percent complete, both ahead of average.

Winter wheat conditions are 23 percent good to excellent. Spring wheat planting is nearly complete with 85 percent of the crop emerged.