This is the first of a series of special planting weather forecasts with Hoosier Ag Today chief meteorologist Ryan Martin, and they will run each Friday through the planting season and online at the Hoosier Ag Today website. Planting and field work conditions could be challenging in the coming week, according to Martin, with wet and active weather moving in.
“As we go through this coming week I only see a couple of days that are going to be dry, and I actually have some kind of moisture moving through the Hoosier state five of the seven days going from Sunday to next Saturday,” Martin says. “Scattered, light precipitation is in here for Easter Sunday, and then we have Monday and Tuesday mostly dry. But starting Wednesday we see rain and thunderstorms coming in, and could see some moderate to heavy rains there for Wednesday, Thursday, lingering showers Friday, and another round of showers pushing in Saturday. all told I think we can see anywhere from ½ to 1 ½ or 2 inches of rain combined for the week.”
If you’re hoping it gets better the following 7-day period, Martin does not have good news for you, regardless of where your Indiana farm fields are located.
“I’ve got moderate to heavy rains in my outlook for the 22nd to 23rd,” he said. “I think we’re looking at a quarter to maybe one full inch there but it covers about 90 percent of the state and we will see some thunderstorms. You put in another weather system toward the end of the second week, the 27th into the 28th, that one to me has the potential to be stronger than the one at midweek next week, so I’m watching there to see if we get some half to 1 ½ inch rains moving through. So this very active pattern that only promotes a couple of days of drying in between some moderate to big systems, that’s not going to help us get any kind of field work done.”
Three and four weeks out offer a little more hope for fields to begin to dry out, but temperatures may start to be an issue. Martin is looking for first week of May temperatures to be 3-4 degrees below normal, both highs and lows. After that week temperatures and precipitation should normalize.
The planting weather forecast is sponsored by Seed Consultants and Kokomo Grain, and if you would like it emailed to you, sign up below.
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