Long Planting Windows Lacking 2nd Half of May

No long planting windows

Ryan Martin
Ryan Martin

Indiana planting in some regions has been stuck on wet in recent days, even with a mostly dry weekend. Below normal temperatures recently haven’t help dry the soil much. So when can we plant again where it’s not dry enough? HAT chief meteorologist Ryan Martin doesn’t sound as positive as we would like.

“It looks like this week we’re going to have a very difficult time getting back into the field in a big way,” he said. “That’s not to say we won’t have a couple of drier days back to back, but we also have at least two weather systems that come in this week, and if the cards get laid right there could actually be three. I like the first system coming through basically as we go through Tuesday. We might stretch into tonight and early Wednesday, but the idea is there is moisture around. Not a lot, but a quarter of an inch to maybe 2/3 maximum with state coverage about 60%.”

He says a better organized system late in the week and into the weekend is developing, with rains likeliest Saturday to Sunday, “looking at rain totals about a quarter of an inch or less. But still that means that in between all we’re going to put together is maybe 3 days of dry air. With the current state of our moisture profile that’s not going to be enough to dry down. I also look for stronger fronts as we go into next week, the 24th into the 25th, half to one inch. And as we go into the 27th to 28th I think you’ve got to look for maybe another half to ¾.”

Thus the Martin weather picture takes us all the way to the end of May without a sizeable planting window to make major progress.

“You might be able to mud some stuff in. You might be able to do a little bit here, a little bit there, but it all comes down to whether you miss one of those and then whether we get the temperatures to respond. Here this week it’s going to be cool to start. I do think though temperatures go above normal as we go longer term.”

He expects the warmup primarily starting the last ten days of May.

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