We find ourselves in a drier forecast pattern this week, as cold air continues to make its presence known. The past few days have brought more clouds to the region with strong north winds drawing down Canadian air across the Great Lakes.

That pattern does not completely go away here for the second part of the week, but we may be able to take a bit of the sting of cold temperatures out as we move forward. And, we should be able to shelve talk about flurries for a little while, after dealing with that off-ad-on in the north for the past couple of days.

We are dry over the entire Eastern Corn Belt on March 14-16 with sunshine returning. We are going to see high pressure meander through the region, but it does not have strong circulation around it. That means we likely do not see exceptionally strong winds on the backside of the high, and without strong south flow, we think temps will remain on the cooler side, mostly normal to below normal.

The weekend looks dry now, with action on March 17 staying south of most of Indiana, just like we saw this past weekend. Finally, south flow arrives on March 17 and should be able to moderate temperatures just a little bit.

A strong low moves into the region on March 19 and into March 20. We see good rain with this system, and temperatures will be warm enough for rain. Totals will be from a quarter-inch to three-quarters of an inch with coverage at 100 percent.

We dry down on the afternoon of March 20 and stay dry into the first half of the extended forecast window. That means we see a rain-free forecast through March 24. The map shows the set-up for the rain on the evening of March 19.

The next chance of well-organized precipitation comes on March 25 with a strong low moving from the Oklahoma panhandle up into northern Michigan. This will put us in the strong south flow part of the circulation, meaning temperatures should rise, and we see threats of quarter-inch to 1-inch rain, including thunderstorms. Coverage will be nearly 90 percent of areas east of the Mississippi River.

The extended pattern stays active with another system a few days later for March 27. This system has a similar track and can bring rain of a quarter-inch to three-quarters of an inch to 80 percent of the region. The heaviest rain out of that event split, with one tracking north into Michigan and the other staying south of the Ohio River. But still, it looks like we may finish March on a much more active note.

Whether we can actually finish like a “lion” remains to be seen. Some were saying we started like one, for what it’s worth.

Temperatures during the next 10 days do not look like anything special. In fact, we see mostly a cool bias through this week and weekend, and would expect mostly normal to below normal ranges into this coming weekend.

This means we can’t quite seem to kick Old Man Winter out just yet, even if our precipitation is trying to look more spring-like.

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.