Milling & Baking News - July 18, 2017 - 32

Weather Outlook X

Late July U.S. Midwest heat and
dryness to stress crops
BY DREW LERNER

A huge ridge of high pressure aloft has
been dominating the western United
States for the past couple of weeks,
resulting in abundant heat and limited rainfall. The ridge is expected to
drift east of the Rocky Mountains during the second half of July, bringing a
real taste of summer to the Midwest.
The rise in temperatures and drop in
rainfall will be significant enough to
induce some stress for corn, soybeans,
sorghum and other crops.
This growing season already has
brought the worst drought since 1988
to a part of the northern U.S. Plains
and neighboring areas of southern

producers in the Great Plains and
western Corn Belt a bit concerned.
There has been little wavering in the
heat. Recent high temperatures from
the high Plains region to the interior
West coast states have been ranging in
the 90s to 106 degrees Fahrenheit with
Valentine, Neb., reaching 109.
The ridge will shift to the east,
reaching across most of the Great
Plains and into the western Corn Belt
during a portion of late July. That is almost the worst possible time for heat
and dryness to evolve across the western Corn Belt because much of the
corn crop will be reproducing during
that time. The recent decline in topsoil

Average 7-day topsoil moisture
ended July 10, 2017

Canada's Prairies. The heat and dryness affecting those areas will be responsible for smaller wheat, barley,
oats, canola and other early season
crops. Corn, soybeans, sugarbeets and
sunseed are next on the list of potential
victims of this year's drought if conditions prevail without much change in
the next few weeks.
In the meantime, poorly distributed
rainfall noted in parts of Illinois, Iowa,
southeastern Missouri, South Dakota,
southern Minnesota and Nebraska in
recent weeks has led to some notable
moisture deficits. Some of these areas
have reported 25% to 50% of normal
rainfall in the past 30 days with portions of Nebraska getting less than
25% of rainfall. A much larger portion
of the western Corn Belt has reported
50% to 75% of normal precipitation,
placing some crops on the verge of becoming too dry.
The high pressure ridge that has
been dominating the western United States in recent weeks has some
32 / July 18, 2017 XMilling & Baking News

moisture in the western Corn Belt has
some crops already experiencing a little stress, although the situation is far
from critical. A general soaking rain in
the second half of July could send production soaring higher for yet another
year, but the odds are against another
pristine production year like that of
2016. There already have been enough
problems this year that production
most likely will not top that of 2016,
and forecasters at World Weather, Inc.
believe a slightly below trend line
yield is most likely for 2017.
Temperatures will be in the 90s to
105 degrees for a little while in the
western Corn and Soybean Belt during the second half of July. The heat
will not be as persistent as that in the
western United States in recent weeks,
but it still will be significant enough
to take the already dry pocketed areas
and create an increase in crop stress.
Relief from the heat and dryness will
be imperative late this month and in
August to protect production of most

summer crops in the Midwest. There
is still plenty of opportunity for timely
rainfall and a little cooling, but for the
latter part of July heat and dryness is a
little more likely than cooler and wetter conditions. August could still help
curb the stress, and there is still a good
chance for that, but once western Corn
Belt crop areas fall behind on rainfall
(as they have already done so in some
areas) it will be difficult to get caught
up during the traditionally warmest
and driest time of the year.
In the meantime, crop moisture and
heat stress in the northern U.S. Plains
and southern Canada's Prairies is
close to its peak intensity, and some
brief breaks from the situation will be
possible in late summer. That does not
mean a full recovery in soil moisture
and crop conditions will take place.
The odds are more likely to hold conditions near status quo, leaving crops
in portions of the Prairies and northern Plains facing lower production.
The eastern Midwest, in the meantime, will experience a more favorable
outlook for crops with production
potentials expected to be favorable,
despite the potential for a little drying
late in the growing season.
Going back in history there have
been 14 droughts that began in the
northern U.S. Plains since the early
1900s. In 42% of those, droughts lingered into a following year. Many of
the droughts that began in the northern Plains expanded to at least the upper U.S. Midwest in the same year that
the drought began. Expanding dryness in the northern Plains seems to be
under way, and a very close monitoring of weather in late July and August
will be warranted. If the drought expands into the upper Midwest, there
would be some additional concern
about U.S. production in 2017.
In the meantime, dryness has
been almost as persistent in eastern
Ukraine and neighboring areas of
Russia's Southern Region this growing season. The area has not suffered
huge production cuts yet because of
a lack of persistent heat. That may
change for a while in late July with
warmer temperatures likely while
rainfall continues lacking. That may
translate into a cut in sunflowerseed,
soybean and corn production, although this year's dryness is mostly
confined to a small region.
A bigger part of the western Commonwealth of Independent states has
endured a wetter-and-milder-thanusual growing season, and that has
kept growth rates a little slow and
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Milling & Baking News - July 18, 2017

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