HAT Chief Meteorologist Ryan Martin’s Planting Weather Forecast is brought to you by:
Corn and soybean planting in the Midwest accelerated this week before rains brought the activity to a stop. Now, planting resumption depends on a couple of upcoming events, according to HAT chief meteorologist Ryan Martin. The first event is this Sunday.
“We had some pretty good dry weather come into the forecast as we finish out this week and go through the first part of the weekend,” he said, “but on Sunday there is going to be a fairly fast moving system coming across the Corn Belt, especially the southern half, and it is going to impact Indiana on Sunday. If you miss the biggest amount of moisture there, you’ve got good planting prospects this week coming up. But if you are in the path of some of that rain that is going to delay things a bit. Right now, I’m thinking a quarter to maybe three-quarters of an inch with the heaviest moisture U.S. 24 southward. I won’t rule it out north of 24, but I think the biggest rains are coming 24 southward.”
For the upcoming week, Martin had been concerned about more rain in the Tuesday night through Wednesday morning period, but that is now less likely, and for the rest of the week “we may not be bright, beautiful, sunny all the way through. There may be clouds around, but I don’t think we see a lot of new moisture there. I think evaporation can continue to move on during that Tuesday-Wednesday period next week. We’re actually looking at a better chance at moisture coming in on Friday, although at this point the moisture totals look to be relatively minor, a quarter to a third of an inch or less if we can get lucky.”
And he says temperatures will bounce around a bit.
“We finish out next week and go into the following week with warmer air trying to resurface again,” Martin explained. “It really looks like temperature-wise this weekend is going to be warm, next week cooler, and then again those temperatures surge back higher as we move through the 10th and into the 11th and 12th.”
Although the GFS weather model has the extended window looking at active skies, Martin is not on board with that, yet. He cites the history of those systems losing a lot of punch, and he doesn’t see a lot of moisture in the extended forecast.
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