The Eastern Corn Belt is starting to warm up just a little bit, but we still have an absence of oppressive heat in the forecast. The coming 10 days will feature near normal precipitation and above normal temperatures.

 

After a fairly dry start to this week, we have a little more active precipitation pattern developing over northern Indiana and southern Michigan for July 20 through the weekend. Farther south, precipitation will be a little more limited. To start it off, a system working through the Great Lakes will trigger some good rains down to US 24 on Thursday with rain totals of a few hundredths up to .75 of an inch. The best rains will be seen in Michigan with nearly 100 percent coverage, while coverage in northern Indiana comes in around 70 percent down to US 24.

For July 21, that frontal complex, although weaker, sags southward through the rest of Indiana, and triggers some minor rains of a few hundredths up to a half-inch and coverage up to 60 percent. These rains will extend into about 70 percent of Ohio, as well.

These two waves definitely favor northern areas much more than south; and if we have any concern at all, it would be about the potential for strengthening thunderstorms on Thursday and into Friday in northern tier counties of Indiana and lower tier counties of Michigan. We will need to watch that zone closely.

Southern parts of Indiana dry out over the weekend, but we see that active precipitation pattern still holding over northern Indiana up into the great lakes with one to maybe two more waves of moisture moving through.

The best chances come on Saturday with scattered showers giving up to three-tenths of an inch over northern Indiana and Lower Michigan, but coverage is only about 50 percent. Sunday we hesitate to wave the all-clear flag, but should see precipitation threats in the north dwindle to about 30 percent coverage.

Southern Indiana and most of Illinois will remain dry. High pressure brings dry weather in to all parts of the region to start next week with dominant sunshine Monday through Wednesday.

Temperatures will remain above normal as we start next week and we will start to see or feel the effects of drying over southern areas. However, just in time comes a strong low moving out of the Missouri Valley and southern Illinois right into the southern half of Indiana and the Ohio River Valley.

This system for late Wednesday afternoon and through Thursday will bring rain totals of a half-inch to 2 inches with coverage of 90 percent of areas from I-70 southward.

There is a threat of severe weather from the system, but it will bring rain to all areas that have missed out on the prior waves mentioned earlier. This moves through quickly, and should be moving across Ohio Thursday afternoon and out of the Eastern Corn Belt by late Thursday night. We should mention that this system and this period are where forecast models are in significant disagreement.

Many models are in line with our thinking, but a couple, and one in particular that gets looked at by many traders and gets talked about on social media (because its free) tries to bring the system in sooner, and father north … waylaying central Illinois, central Indiana and central Ohio with up to 3 inches of rain or more.

 

We don’t see that, but thought it should be mentioned, because you never know what is going to be brought up by others when it comes to weather.

Behind that strong storm complex, we move drier once again. In fact, a weak front is on track to move through around July 28, bringing rains up to half an inch, but the rest of the period through Aug. 1 looks to be dominated by a strong upper level high pressure dome and a minor ridge that will keep most rain action at bay.

We see the storm track diverting most systems to our north as we finish the month, and a nice flow of warmer air coming in from the south. That pushes us to keep our bias of above normal temperatures through month’s end and trend precipitation to more of a normal to below normal level at the turn of the month as well.

While this weather pattern may be seen as less than ideal in some ways over the next 10 days, mostly due to itsprecipitation timing and distribution, it still does not have anything in it that can be seen as overly threatening.

There is not a lot here that serves to dramatically increase our current crop condition levels, but at the same time, we don’t think things will that much worse off come Aug. 1 either.

At this point, you have to call it basically status quo with the rest of 2017 to this point. 

 

while this weather pattern may be seen as less than ideal over the next 10 days, mostly due to its precipitation timing and distribution, it still does not have anything in it that can be seen as overly threatening.

There is not a lot here that serves to dramatically increase our current crop condition levels, but at the same time, we don’t think things will that much worse off come Aug. 1 either.

 

Ryan Martin is Chief Meteorologist for Hoosier Ag Today, a licensed Commodity Trader and the Farmer Origination Specialist for Louis Dreyfus Company’s Claypool Indiana Soybean Crush Plant.

 

The views and opinions expressed in the  column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments may write to him in care of this publication.