Forecasts Support Continued Crop Development

Indiana corn developing well

May 15 corn looks goodUSDA released the first corn crop condition report Tuesday as part of the weekly progress report and 74 percent of the nation’s corn crop is rated good to excellent. In Indiana the number is 75 percent and HAT chief meteorologist Ryan Martin says the condition report is one of the best historically at this point in the season.

“It’s not a record good to excellent category, but we’ve got some of the best,” he explained. “So honestly we just need timely rains to come through here in the weeks ahead to maintain this number. That’s what made last year so interesting, not just in Indiana but nationwide. We saw week after week after week of conditions that were exactly the same in terms of good to excellent.”

Martin says it looks good for those timely rains to occur over much of the Corn Belt, especially the eastern Corn Belt.

“We had some showers and thunderstorms move through last night and we’re still looking at some lingering precipitation probably through the day today as the cold front kind of clears us. We’ve got another system that comes through Saturday to Sunday, and then we have some timely moisture next week. I took a look at the European model and their European Weeklys, and it goes out 30 days. Through the entire month of June I looked at 5-day precipitation totals, and amazingly every single day of the run had us and most of the Corn Belt actually in the half to ¾ of an inch range. That doesn’t mean it’s going to rain every day but that means every 5 days we can basically count on a half to ¾ of an inch of moisture.”

And that will keep the corn crop in the very high good to excellent category for awhile.

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