Ryan Martin’s Indiana Ag Forecast for August 20, 2018

Rain in the forecast for the next two days…today and tomorrow. Rains move into western Indiana first as we head toward midday, and then we see action spread across the rest of the state through the night tonight and all day tomorrow. The heaviest and most frequent rains will be in here toward this evening and through the overnight into early tomorrow. The rest of tomorrow will feature more scattered, lighter action. We are leaving rain totals alone at half to 2”, coverage at 95%. The remaining 5% will see rain, just maybe not up to the half inch lower threshold. Rains from 1.25”-2” will come in areas that see one of several bands of heavier thunderstorms. These stronger storms look to be rather widespread, so expecting the upper end of the range in a majority of the state will be misguided. Still, an inch could be pretty easy, given the fact that the rains can hang on for over 30 hours once they start. The map above shows cumulative rain potential for this system, through midnight tomorrow night.

Dry weather is back on Wednesday and holds through the rest of the work week, as expected. We should see dominant sunshine in the Wednesday through Friday period, and excellent drying after the rains we pick up today and tomorrow. A strong high-pressure dome will move overhead during the period.

We still like a mostly dry weekend but are starting to see signs of a disturbance that may make its presence known here over the weekend, mostly on Saturday. Several models are suggesting a thunderstorm cluster moves through the state Friday night into early Saturday, an offshoot of a frontal complex and disturbance in the great lakes that finishes the week. We think coverage at this time will be no better than 30-40%, and still look for a dry weekend in many areas. A few lingering showers or thunderstorms could be seen in southern Indiana overnight Saturday night. The better precipitation comes together in Michigan and slides into Ohio in this period. However, the threat is large enough for us to make this baby-step type change in our forecast this morning.

Next week turns out dry for the most part as well. Save for a chance of a few showers backing into eastern Indiana out of Ohio Monday afternoon, we should be dry through at least Wednesday. That dry stretch means we are knocking back out next frontal boundary at least a day, looking for scattered showers for the 30th into the 31st. Rain totals there will be around .25”-.5” with coverage at 70%. A compact little low moves across Michigan for Labor Day, and drags a cold front across Indiana. That will have a potential for .25”-1” over 80% of the state right at the end of the extended forecast window.

Temperatures continue to show no concerning trends. In fact, we should stay mostly normal through the rest of the month, with highs from the upper 70s through the mid-80s for the period. Normals are from 79-83.