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Moisture pendulum moving in Ohio

Active weather patterns earlier this year have helped erode drought conditions in parts of the Eastern Corn Belt.

Ohio State University Extension Climate Specialist Aaron Wilson tells Brownfield it has taken a while to break up dry fall conditions.

“Mostly we’re sitting adequately to maybe slightly wetter than average if you’re looking at northwest Ohio for instance—it’s been really wet since the first of the year, so they don’t want any more rainfall right now,” he shares.

Nearly 90 percent of the state was in some form of drought last November and Wilson says this past winter in Ohio was the second warmest on record.

“Some of the driest conditions in some areas of the state that we’ve seen since the mid-1960s,” he adds.

Despite the warmer and drier than normal conditions, Wilson says the current cold front is likely to slow down an early spring warm-up and keep planting on pace with average.

Brownfield interviewed Wilson during this week’s Ohio Conservation Tillage and Technology Conference in Ada.