Harvest Weather Forecast: Dry with Limited Rain Chances This Week

Dry weather dominates our first look at harvest weather this week. In our opinion, we have a mostly wide-open harvest window through next weekend. In fact, our thoughts will be pretty short and sweet here, as we have limited rain threats at all in the next 10 days, and only one “challenging” part to the forecast.

As we have been talking about for the past week, we are seeing a large weather complex to our west this weekend. It has put significant rains into the northern plains and western corn belt. However, it dies out near the Mississippi River and in northern Wisconsin before throwing any moisture our way. High pressure will build in over southern Ontario next week, and that will give us a good chance at sunny, dry weather for the entire period, through next weekend.

One caveat…and this is the challenge to this forecast: some data suggests that showers may try and develop around the outside of the high-pressure circulation…kind of like a “ring of fire” effect. This is usually more of a phenomenon we see in the summer with more heat and drought.

Now, we have plenty of dryness or droughty-ness right now…but the heat is not really here. So, we will watch this closely and see if any showers develop on a scattered to isolated basis later this coming week. Overall, evaporation rates will remain at near maximum…although the main moisture to evaporate will be limited mostly to morning dew. If the showers on the outer rim of high pressure do not materialize, we are fully dry with no impedance to harvest over the next 10 days.

Extended Period:

A system is trying to come together in the pacific Northwest at the end of next weekend. That system will move east through the first full week of October. It’s uncertain how much moisture will be able to hold together out of it as it exits the Rockies, but we are projecting rain arriving here out of that system at some point that week. Right now, we are penciling in a frontal passage late Thursday the 5^th into Friday the 6^th…but timing will be changeable we are certain. Rain totals can be in the .25”-.75” range with 80% coverage. We do see some significantly cooler air coming behind that front to finish out the 16 day period for the 7^th through the 10^th.

Weeks 3 & 4:

Weeks 3 and for both are trending toward near normal precipitation, so that means we see at least a little bit of precipitation potential both weeks. Temperatures, though, will be warm…anywhere from 2-5 degrees above normal for weekly averages both weeks. That means we keep that first frost at bay in many areas pretty easily.

Week 3

Precipitation (green: above normal, brown: below)