Harvest Forecast: Nice, Easy Despite Minor Hiccup to Finish the Weekend

Our last harvest forecast is pretty nice and easy overall. The next 10 days will be predominantly dry. In fact, most of the state WILL be dry. There is only a minor batch of clouds in for far northern Indiana on Sunday as we have a front ripping through the northern Great Lakes.

Sunny, warm, and dry for Saturday statewide, at least compared to the cold we have seen off and on over the past week. Sunday will feature clouds over the northern third of the state, and we can’t rule out a few isolated showers in far northern areas, perhaps down to the Lagrange and Angola areas. But the majority of the state is dry Sunday too. However, the front will bring in colder air for Sunday, with the coldest shot overnight Sunday night into early Monday morning.

We go sunny and dry for Monday right on through the rest of the week and weekend, through Sunday the 8^th. Temps will be cool to start, but by midweek we will be warm with above normal temps on through the weekend. We expect good evaporation and dry down. Remaining harvest finally will get the longer term dry window we need to finish up. The map below shows rain totals for the entire 10 day period over the region.

Extended Period:

The next good chance of rain we see statewide comes in the extended period, for next Tuesday, the 10^th. A cold front moves through the eastern corn belt and brings rain potential on the magnitude of .1”-.6” and coverage at 80%. That front brings in significantly colder air. AS cool as some of our days were last week, the airmass coming in for mid-November is much colder. WE expect below normal temps and back to back to back hard freezes. IF you don’t see a freeze nip your plants this weekend (tomorrow), rest assured they will succumb to colder air on the 11^th and 12^th at least. We are dry for a few days and then a warm front for the 14^th-15^th brings a chance of scattered showers with coverage at 40%, mostly over the northern half of the state.

Weeks 3 & 4:

After the cold next week, we do see temps bounce a bit for the last half of November. Temps will be above normal in both week 3 and week 4. WE are dry for week three but look to pick up a nice thanksgiving week storm event that will push us to above normal precipitation to round out the month in week 4.

Week 3

Precipitation (green: above normal, brown: below)