Two systems in the next five days will keep talk of field work delays on the minds of many growers. However, we can point to a full week of dry air next week to stave off major concern or depression over our struggles to “get back at it”.

Here is what we see for the next 10 days:

A system that developed earlier this week in the Central Plains started putting rain into the region on Oct. 10. Those continue all across the Eastern Corn Belt on Oct. 11. Rain totals through Wednesday will end up in the quarter-inch to 1 1/4 inch range across 80 percent of the region.

Thunderstorms are key to getting into the upper end of that range, and the best place for those will be northern Indiana, particularly northwestern parts of the state, along with northeast Illinois and southern Michigan. These rains will provide another harvest and field work interruption, a mere 60 hours after the remains of Tropical Storm Nate hit parts of Indiana and Ohio.

Behind this system, we see dry weather returning for the period of Oct. 12-14 with sunshine, high pressure, normal to above normal temperatures and some good breezes developing. In fact, as high pressure moves off to the south and east late in the week, we think that we will see some pretty strong southwest winds for Oct. 13-14, perhaps up to 12-25 mph, providing some good drying.

Now, will it be enough drying to get back into the fields and roll on with harvest? That is still up in the air and will be depend on how your soils have handled moisture to this point. To be sure, even with some of the larger rain totals we have seen in the past week, when you drive around, there is not a lot of moisture sitting, which is a testament to just how dry it was before our recent rain.

The second system in five days arrives on Oct. 15. This one will bring similar rain, with totals of a quarter-inch to 1 inch over about 80 percent of the region. This system is a little different, in that we see it coming in from the northwest as a slow, sagging type front that has the moisture moving along the front quickly from west to east as the front itself sags toward south-southeast.

This front looks more impressive off to the northwest over northern Illinois and Wisconsin. So we think that the best rain, given this set up, will be farther north, and we look for decreasing rain totals as it moves over the rest of the region from Sunday morning to Sunday evening, from northwest to southeast. Southern parts of the region will be at the lower end of the range or even miss out.

The map shows combined rain totals from the two systems this week through midnight, Oct. 15.

Behind that system, we look for dry weather for all of next week. Sunshine will combine with near-normal temperatures over the Eastern Corn Belt, and we should see evaporation rates at a near maximum. This will promote good drying.

While temperatures are near normal, keep in mind that “normals” for the month are falling every day, as we see significant drops in normal temperatures for all of October. Still, though, this is not a bad forecast, at all.

In the extended period, we are most interested in a front for Oct. 21 over the region, as it looks to bring a quarter-inch to 1 inch rain totals and another 80 percent coverage set up. This front has been consistently on our projections for nearly a week, so we have good confidence that we will see another good threat of rain around this time frame.

Behind that front we cool off farther, and we think there is good likelihood of frost after Oct. 21-22. Just a bit of trivia as we go, eastern North Dakota finally saw its first hard frost or freeze earlier this week on Oct. 9. This is about three weeks behind normal. Our first frosts across the Eastern Corn Belt usually are happening right about now – give or take a week or two, north to south.

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.