WASHINGTON — Corn planting progressed significantly across parts of the Corn Belt over the past week thanks to drier weather and the arrival of summer weather during the latter part of last week. The jump in corn planting progress brought many states closer to the 5-year average of corn planted at this point in the season. For the 18 states that planted 92% of the 2016 corn acreage, the corn planted as of May 14th, 2017 was 71% completed compared to the 5-year average of 70%.
Momentum on the corn planting side is likely to slow down this week as an unsettled weather pattern has returned to the Corn Belt. In fact, this is on track to be the wettest mid-May in 26+ years for the Corn Belt. Severe thunderstorms rolled through the Central U.S. and Midwest Monday and Tuesday, while Wednesday featured storms focused in the Central Corn Belt region. Here, corn emergence is still running behind the 5-year average, which may be good news given the recent spell of severe thunderstorms that brought very large hail and damaging winds. The threat for severe weather continues today (May 18th) with a high risk of long-lived tornadoes and large hail across western Oklahoma and Kansas. The threat for severe weather will extend down into central Texas and across the central Plains. Another bout of severe storms will fire up in nearly the same place again on Friday (May 19th).
Wet weather will continue across the Corn Belt into this weekend and next week. Further planting will be touch-and-go as there will be brief breaks of drier weather between the impulses of energy that will be dropping down into the area producing showers and thunderstorms. May 2017 is on track to be the wettest May in 4 years and the coldest in 3 years for the Corn Belt as a whole.
River flooding continues on some of the major rivers including the Mississippi, Illinois, and Ohio Rivers. The flooding stems from very heavy rainfall back in April. The University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture reports that the flooding impacted over 970,000 acres of farmland in Arkansas. More than 360,000 acres of crops fell victim to floodwater with about 50 percent of this loss in rice.
Temperature-wise we’re at a point in the season where the risk of frost and freezes starts to drop off, however, there will still be a chance of some freezing temperatures in the far northern Plains over the next couple of days. Speaking of colder weather, snow is falling back across the Rocky Mountains and in places like Colorado Springs and Denver, CO as a powerful storm system moves through the area.
Meanwhile, summer weather has arrived in the Northeast along with drier weather this week which should help to move along corn planting in places currently lagging the 5-year average, like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Farmers would be wise to take advantage of this stretch of warm and dry weather as next week will bring wetter and cooler weather to the region which may last into the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
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