We have been slow to dry out this week as colder air has worked into the Eastern Corn Belt. The good news is that we should start to see better sunshine going forward, but the days of having long, continuous dry stretches for easy harvest may be gone for the time being.

We still have a bit of a cloudy, damp-feeling pattern around here at midweek, but we are not looking for new precipitation. Gusty winds out of the north should start to subside today, and the coldest part of this current air mass will be on Oct. 25.

Sunshine returns for the second half of this week. We have nice weather with seasonable temperatures for Oct. 26-27. Warming, though, is something to not get too keen on. The warmth of all of last week will not be duplicated in Indiana. Some drying is likely in this period, however we question whether it will really be enough to matter, after the rains we saw to start this week?

Clouds will start to increase once again overnight on Oct. 27. A quick-moving cold front sweeps through on Oct. 28 and will not be noteworthy for its precipitation. Rather, this front is much more striking with what it brings behind it.

Rains triggered by the front will be anywhere from a few hundredths of an inch to perhaps .3 inches across 60 percent of the region. But, once the front is through, much colder air is in, and we will look at our first hard frost over a large part of the region. Central to eastern Illinois will even see some hard freeze potential. This will be about 2-3 weeks later than our normal first frost in many locations.

The map shows morning temperatures on Oct. 29 just past sunrise and Saturday night’s lows.

Dry weather moves in to finish the weekend on Sunday. Sunshine will dominate all week next week as most systems seem to pass by farther north. We are keeping an eye on the set up late next Friday, as there may be a few scattered showers that rotate through while a better disturbance passes by over the Great Lakes.

That system right is projected to move on a line out of the Dakotas into central to southern Wisconsin. However, it could slide a bit farther south. Either way, at this time, the moisture availability and strength of the system is not all that impressive.

An interesting set up may be in the works toward the end of the 10-day period. A strong storm complex is coming together in the Plains around Nov. 4-5. Ample moisture comes together along a frontal boundary that is bringing in significantly colder air. A massive upper level high is behind all of this and signals our first solid Canadian air incursion into the United States.

All of these combined forces lead us to watch this event, closely. Right now we look for rain to move over most of the Eastern Corn Belt. However, back in the Plains, we could see sloppy, wet snow get going. Rain here can be up to an inch or more, and then much colder air comes in behind.

It appears November will not wait long, at all, to remind us just what time of year it really is. We will watch this system closely as it evolves. Right now it looks like we start November on the wet-side of things.

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.