Cold Adds Dry Down Complications to Hoosier Harvest

Cold-making-it-harder-for-crop-to-dry

Farmers needing to get back to harvest operations will not get much of an assist from the new HAT Harvest Forecast. It has been very wet this week and there are a few drier days coming, but chief meteorologist Ryan Martin says the dry conditions won’t last long enough.

“We don’t have enough time for drying in between our upcoming weather events, so we’re definitely cold here to finish out the week and go through the weekend,” Martin said. “Temperatures are well below normal and we saw snow on Halloween for the first time in a while. Last time that happened was 2014. But we are not going to see drying happening at an exceptionally fast pace just because of the cold air that’s in for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We will see temperatures moderate a little on Monday, but that’s going to be ahead of our next front.”

He says the next ten days in Indiana bring the complications of three different weather systems.

“The first one comes Tuesday, giving us from .2 to .8 of an inch across 80 percent of Indiana, and there is maybe a 12 hour break between that one and the next one that shows up on Thursday, continuing into Friday that gives us ¾ to two inches of rain combined over the region. That’s much wetter than what we had been seeing earlier in the week. And once we get to the 11^th into the 12^th we’ve got rain coming back, a half to and inch and a quarter, 100 percent of Indiana getting coverage.”

It is now November and Martin says the colder temperatures are becoming a real problem for crop dry down.

“In between the systems that come through we do shut the moisture off quite cleanly and we get good sunshine in between as well,” he explained. “But you have to look at temperatures. We are now moving into a time of year where our temperature averages continue to go down. That colder air cannot hold as much moisture as warm air, so that means we cannot dry the crop as fast.”

Combine the bigger rains and cooler temperatures, and farmers are looking at a lot of waiting on harvest operations all the way through to the middle of the month.

The harvest forecast is made possible by First Farmers Bank and Trust, proud to support Indiana farmers, by Kokomo grain, and by Seed Genetics Direct, a family-owned company meeting the corn, wheat, soybean, alfalfa and herbicide needs of Corn Belt farmers. Value. Knowledge. Performance. It’s in their genetics.

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