Planting Forecast: Rain Potential Daily Next Week

Heavy rain at the outset of last week doomed our field work chances for most of the week in many areas. This week. We start the planting forecast dry, but rains that show up late Sunday will have a hard time going away all week. The good news is that we are seeing lower rain totals for this week than we feared earlier this week. The bad news is we have rain potential almost every day for the week, and even with smaller totals, there is no real good opportunity to dry, the way we see the week playing out right now. We will also state for the record that there still is not a good consensus among any models or data. Really, this forecast could change dramatically in the days ahead, and our projection is for a wet week. It could be much wetter than we are projecting, or perhaps it goes drier. This has been a very difficult pattern and period to get a handle on over the entire eastern corn belt.

Fully sunny and dry for Saturday. Temps will be above normal. It will be a good day with good evaporation. This will be the best chance of field work in this forecast. Sunday will see clouds. Overnight Saturday night into Sunday morning we can’t rule out a few hit and miss showers over the northern half of the state, but really we see no more than a few hundredths to a tenth. Rains start to build back into SW Indiana late Sunday afternoon and evening.

Overnight Sunday night through Monday we have showers and a few thunderstorms that can bring .25”-1.5” rain totals with coverage at 80% of the state. The heaviest action will be with thunderstorms and those look most likely in central IN, but we will not limit their spread or scope at this time.

Tuesday forward through the rest of the week we have a chance of scattered showers every day. Daily coverage will be no better than 60% on most days but may reach 80% on Thursday. Daily totals range from a few hundredths to .5”, and for the week combined, the rains can add an additional .25”-1.5” to what we see Sunday night through Monday. The map below shows rain potential for the 10 day period as a compared to normal. All of us are expecting above normal moisture potentially. Remember our comment above that moisture could be more than the totals we are projecting in the paragraphs above, and we hope they are less….time will tell. The key here is that we all won’t see rain every day…but there are chances over the state, and even if you miss rain on one or more days, with the set up, we will not see any wholesale drying for the week.

Sunday may be dry for the daytime hours, but a chance of showers returns overnight Sunday night into Monday.

Extended Period:

Tuesday and Wednesday, the 25^th and 26^th we should see some drier air. But, showers are back for Thursday the 27^th with .1”-.4” potential. We go sunny and dry for the 28^th through the 31^st.

Weeks 3 & 4:

Slightly more active precipitation will be found over the region for week three, as we see normal to slightly above normal precipitation for the week. We dry down in week 4 and may be able to squeeze out a totally or mostly dry week there as we head toward mid-June. Temps for both weeks suggest we have finally shaken off the cold air, and we should be well above normal both weeks.

Week 3

Precipitation (green: above normal, brown: below)

Temperatures (blue: below normal, orange: above)

Week 4

Precipitation (green: above normal, brown: below)

Temperatures (blue: below normal, orange: above)