Ryan Martin

Opinion 

We find ourselves in the midst of a fantastic, wide open harvest window across the Eastern Corn Belt as we head through the last half of the week. In fact, if the cards fall just right, we will see this harvest window remain open through most a large part of the rest of the month, too.

A strong upper level ridge is in control over the nation, and it is promoting sunny, unseasonably warm weather across a large part of the Corn Belt. In fact, earlier this week, we were able to see a surface map that showed literally no fronts anywhere across the entire nation. That is rather rare.

Hey, we have no arguments with that; we will sit here and reap the benefits.

We transition onto the backside of high pressure for the last half of this week, and that will bring strong southwest winds into the region. Temperatures will be a good 10-15 degrees above normal over the region as sunshine dominates.

The map shows temperatures in relation to normal for Sunday, Oct. 21. Evaporation rates are at maximum for the remainder of this week and the start of the weekend, averaging nearly a quarter-inch of moisture leaving into the atmosphere per day. The relative humidity will remain low and with nice strong breezes emerging, dry down will be excellent right on into the start of the weekend.

Harvest in many areas that did not see heavy rain this past weekend has ramped up already, and the rest of the region will run full tilt within the next day or so.

There is only one potential hiccup in this nice harvest forecast, and that comes late this weekend. We do have a minor front that looks to move through Indiana on the afternoon of Oct. 21. This front looks very impressive for Oct. 20 over Western Corn Belt locations, bringing a quarter-inch to 1 inch of rain to parts of Iowa and Missouri. However, the front loses strength and most of its moisture before arriving in the Eastern Corn Belt.

For that reason, we look for only a few hundredths to perhaps a tenth of an inch over 60 percent of eastern Illinois and Indiana for Oct. 21 and only 30 percent or less of Michigan and Ohio.

Honestly, the biggest indicators of the front passing will be clouds, a wind shift and slightly cooler temps behind the front. If we are right on this, we should not really see any significant delay in harvest from this front in our area.

Behind the Sunday front, we go back to completely dry weather for next week. No new rain on the way Oct. 22 through at the start of the following weekend. We do have a strong front on the way to finish the month, but it does not impact Eastern Corn Belt locations until Oct. 29, where we can see rain potential up to at least three-quarters of an inch over 80 percent of the region.

That front will renew a push of colder air across all areas.

This forecast should allow rapid advancement of harvest in the Eastern Corn Belt through the end of the month.

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.