Weather outlook for Grain Belt and beyond in 2025 - Eric Hunt

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Is it going to be hotter, colder, wetter, more stormy, less stormy, more drought? Let's find out. This week we're going to talk about the weather. We're going to talk about climate. We're going to look at things in the Midwest, the Corn Belt and across the United States. What factors are shaping up scientifically, and what signs are those for what is coming up in the growing season ahead? We're going to go to Nebraska, to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. We're going to talk with Eric Hunt. He's a doctor. He is the assistant extension educator of agriculture, meteorology and climate resilience. You also see him on Market Journal. He knows a little bit about market to market. He knows about what the importance of weather is for agriculture. So we're going to look at the growing season ahead. What signs are there for what is to come. And speaking of coming, we're coming to Nebraska with this podcast here in just a couple of weeks. If you want to learn more, sign up at our website of markettomarket.org or subscribe to our newsletter. We'll tell you all the great details about how you can join us on March 31st in Lincoln, Nebraska will be there, so we want to see you if you're anywhere close. And we also have one other fun road show that we've been talking about in the newsletter. But now let's get into the weather, talk with Eric. I've seen Market Journal. I know what it is. How different is it then Market to Market?

[Hunt] I would say the biggest difference is Market to Market, you guys focus a lot more on just the actual markets. Corn, we cattle, hogs, which is great. I think that supplements Market very nicely. But will we focus a little bit more on just the Brassica market? The market's a lot more regional. National. So we talk about more of the research feature stories are going on around the state. And I think Nebraska has a little bit more diversity in agriculture than, say, some of the states to our East. We certainly have a lot of corn and soybean here, but we have more wheat. We have sorghum or below, and you have the Panhandle. You got dry beans and sugar beets, and you have a lot of the state. We have the largest intact, grass and ecosystem in the North American and in the Nebraska state also. That's also a very important feature with a lot of irrigation. So a lot of things are just a lot more specific to Nebraska. We focus on a market journal, and I do the water segment after, going on two years. So the people in Nebraska who used to be either fortunately or unfortunately for them.

[Yeager] Did you ever want to be one of the guys in front of the green screen? At six and 10:00 at night?

[Hunt] You know, I never did, but I have to say that I really enjoyed getting to do those weather segments. Yeah, something else has been fun. I started a TikTok page back in September with help of an intern, and I go out there to the Hardin Hall Prairie outside this building. And I've been and I just found myself talking for about the weather for 3.5 minutes, and I have a blast doing that. I really do.

[Yeager] Do you? Well, I mean, is I forget it. Are you a certified meteorologist?

[Hunt] Well, I have a PhD in natural resource sciences, a bachelor's in meteorology. So yeah, I would call myself a meteorologist. I don't have the Amos broadcast seal. I actually have no training as a broadcaster whatsoever.

[Yeager] So perfect. Why don't you be on television every week?

[Hunt] Yeah. Of course.

[Yeager] Any monkey can do it. I'm proof right here. I mean, there's not much else.

[Hunt] About it here.

[Yeager] Eric, you grew up in various places, spent some time in Illinois. But you're in Nebraska. It's home now. You talk about all the different crops. How is it to make sense of weather in Nebraska and how each different type of weather impacts everybody differently?

[Hunt] Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, weather in the state varies significantly sometimes as it does in other states in this part of the country. But, you know, especially early spring, you can have people planting soybean then for southeast of Brassica, and they're still trying to find cattle out of a blizzard in the Panhandle, that's not unusual. And you know, what is really going official, like say, for example, you know, cattle, they, they the rangeland guys, particularly the guys that, have, feedlots, they probably want to dry through at times a year. Maybe the wheat farmers want it a little bit wetter. In general, you know, I don't think anybody wants a steak. Excessive moisture in the spring here, because that means that corn and soybeans are getting planted on time. That's also not great for wheat finishing up. They want some moisture for wheat. But you don't want too much moisture for wheat. Probably the biggest issue maybe will come in the fall when, you know, wheat needs decent moisture in October, especially late September. October? Is that full, precipitation? What do we. It is very, very critical, perhaps even more critical that I realize after spending some time talking with wheat breeders. Guys try to get their corn and soybean out of the field are a little bit less enthusiastic about raining a whole lot in October. For good reason. So there could be some competing interest. Certainly. I you know, I've been in the state for a long time. Well, it's really good conditions for corn and soybean, you know, if there if prices are really good for corn and soybean years, sometimes that high corn price maybe isn't so good for cows. So I guess there could be a benefit. To what? Sometimes a cattle market could be really good. And maybe the corn market's little, you know, maybe not so good. But in general, it's up. Times are both down and sometimes are both up.

[Yeager] Well, then you have this whole dry land thing to figure in, and you can say, well, in this area that has it rained. But then you look at their crop and it looks like it's rain because they can irrigate and then they have the dry land area. So I mean, you have all of these crazy factors to deal with.

[Hunt] We do. So the southeast corner of the state is almost entirely all rain fed like it isn't in Iowa and Illinois. You know, the rest of the Corn Belt, northeast Nebraska is a little bit more mixed. There's still quite a bit of dry land. So he really Lincoln is sort of the cutoff for dry land. But even if you go to the very southeast, it's not that uncommon to find drain tile with rain fed agriculture, which is certainly not the case for most of the state. I would say the prime irrigated acreage would extend from a little bit west to Seward, which is about a half hour west of Lincoln or to about Carney. So that south central section of the state, that's really the prime irrigated acreage. It's really good ground, fertile soil. And in general, those there's ample supply of groundwater for us to be able to put on. You know, so I would say in that area, it's more truly, especially once you get over to like York and Fillmore counties, it's probably more truly supplemental. They're able to get really high end yields with, say, 4 to 7in of water here you get less. It starts becoming more truly essential. If you get in the western portion of the state. It is really essential to actually have irrigation to grow. Anything that's high yielding, you do get into the southwestern corner of the state, though. You get it a lot areas. You get a lot of natural resources districts that we which we refer to as falling over appropriated. So out there they have a lot more stringent regulations on how much water you can pump. So what you'll note, what you'll see there is people will keep maybe some of their best acreage in irrigation, maybe the less stellar acreage gets put into dry land. And if they rains they have a decent crop. Who doesn't rain? They don't. They're not necessarily dependent on that. A lot of times they're a little bit more diversified in their operations on that part of the state. So it just gets very, very different when you get out there. Most of the irrigation state is done through center pivot. You do still see some flood irrigation, particularly if you get near some rivers. And then, you know, you get out in the Panhandle, you know, they move mostly your irrigation. There's a little bit dry land.

They also irrigate. But weed out there, which is not as common in, say, like, parts of south central southeastern Nebraska, where there's some wheat, but there's been a pretty big shift. So the area where I live in, prior to the mid 1990s or prior to genetically modified corn, see, this was mostly sorghum country. In wheat country, you had to go to the county east, the very eastern counties along the Missouri River were the edge of the traditional corn belt. This area was mostly wheat and sorghum. And then you would west of here, or up north and to Saunders County, you farm were irrigated? Corn, soybean. I think soybean came into the state a little bit later that did in parts of Iowa, but has been pretty predominant as part of the rotation for the last 30 years. So we have transitioned into this area looking a lot more like the areas to our east in the last couple of decades.

[Yeager] Well, and the corn production numbers reflect that. There's more corn acres in places like Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, as, seed technology has changed over the years. And so that puts in a we could get into a whole nother discussion about what it's done to aquifers and water tables and things like that. But let's talk about what is above ground right now. And if I look at the Drought Monitor that the most recent one that came out, the areas that you were referring to, the western part of the state where we always think of it is dry. It is red right now. It is dry there. How long has that been going on out there? Well, if you get to the northern part of the Nebraska panhandle, it gets into parts of South Dakota or Wyoming that's been going on since early last summer. So kind of a dry spring. And then once you got the summer, they just weren't getting the moisture. So you started seeing the drought show up in the drought monitor that started kind of slowly expanding toward the north and toward the east throughout the summer, and then most of the state. And certainly once you got into Iowa and Illinois, parts of the lot of the Corn Belt, really, we got through most of last summer without having any major drought issues. Then we got into late August or September. Things really just dried out. We had a lot of what we call upper level ridging sitting over us last fall, so we had very little precipitation and very warm temperatures. So we actually saw what I would call a very late season flash drought across the Corn Belt. And we saw a lot of two and three category degradations on the drought monitor from basically almost nothing to some cases, severe drought. There were pockets of northeastern Nebraska that were in extreme drought for little while. The fall. There's still some problems up there. And I would say if you look at a lot of Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, parts of Illinois, there is a lot of moderate drought, which is to say that it's not the worst of the worst, but we need to get the moisture the next month, month and a half. We do not have a lot of soil moisture right now. So we take a look at soil moisture percentiles across this region. You know, you'll see that, you'll see a lot of dark red there across a lot of Illinois. Now, that does not mean that you literally have no soil moisture there. And so you'll enjoy this is just wildlife percentile survey. Robust, land surface models is the NASA land information systems. I used to run this at a previous position, throttle the previous job, and. But what this shows is the reflection of for this time of year. Are we relatively wet, relatively dry, or kind of in between a lot of places, we're just kind of dry. I do think a couple of really good rain events would take care of a lot of problems in Nebraska. Certainly the eastern portion of Braska and Iowa. And I think in Illinois, I think we're going to get the rain that we need here the next month or so. So I'm a little bit less concerned about that area. But we'll get out in the, you know, the High Plains region of western Nebraska, western Dakotas, prospects there are just not as good. And we need a lot of moisture out there to eradicate some of the long range drought conditions. I'm also getting concerned about the southern High Plains region that doesn't show up as well. The soil percentiles map, but they've been pretty dry down there of late. And I'll get into this a little bit later, but we're moving into a pattern that isn't necessarily as conducive for that region always gets much moisture. If you get in the eastern portion of the Corn Belt, though, things really have improved a lot. The parts of Indiana, Ohio had one of their driest seasons on record. Not maybe not a record, but certainly worse they've had in a long time. We've had a lot of moisture in those areas starting late last fall, getting into this winter. And so things really are a lot better right now in parts of Indiana, Ohio that they were, 4 or 5 months ago.

[Yeager] And we look at river basins. I look at the Missouri River basin, I mean, where the Missouri starts. Yes. It's not in drought. But as it picks up steam, it's dry and as it bends there in central Missouri, we've talked about the I-70 corridor. A lot of snow this winter east to west or west to east there. But it is that Ohio Valley, that does seem to have less drought conditions right now. So you hear this question a lot. What is the impact of the way this drought monitor sits right now when we come out of winter here, hard winter in the next week or so. What's that due to shipping on the Mississippi? Because that always seems to be a big discussion.

[Hunt] Yeah. So the good news for the lower Mississippi is since the Ohio Valley region has had a lot more moisture in the last, say, couple months. And, some areas, a Kentucky and Tennessee had historic flooding here earlier in February. So it flows Ohio River up quite a bit. And that flow in the lower part of Mississippi, I believe, is up quite a bit. But we're still struggling a little bit further north in the Mississippi. So the northern half of Mississippi, the flows are down, and we are going to need, a lot of moisture to really know this spring to help with that. And if we look at the soil moisture. So a lot of that waste, especially if it comes in a nice way, which is great for agricultural producers getting a recharge of soil moisture. But if there's a lot of runoff, that means that the rivers aren't going to go up as quickly. And you mentioned snowfall, that's important. So a lot of years we'd be looking at there to be a pretty decent snowpack in the Northern Plains, upper Midwest, melt off and help us get that recharge into the river. Not going to have that this year. We have had very, very little snowfall across a lot of the Midwest, Upper Midwest in particular so far this winter. So parts of southern Minnesota really are running, you know, two to 2.5ft worth of deficit for snowfall so far this winter. So I do think there's going to be, continued pressure on the northern half of the Mississippi in terms of the flow, unless we just have a super wet spring, that is way possible. I do think some of the tributaries in the Mississippi from the east, will be improving. I'm a little bit more skeptical of the Missouri running super high the spring, which would help the flows into the Mississippi. So I do think that's going to be something to watch for as we move into the summer.

[Yeager] We always need to know what the weather patterns are and where we're at, where you and I are sitting. It matters. Several states away on the ocean and the temperatures. What are they telling you right now?

[Hunt] Sure. So we are still in La Nina. And I know, especially once you get on our part of the country. La Nina is not a four letter word per se, but it's not necessarily our friend. A lot of years. And we, you know, if you look at where we hit the La Nina, we look at that in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. So right now we see a blob of blue on the currency super map. So it is a case colder sea surface temperatures. So really in the winter. So if you go back about six weeks we saw more cold water closer to South America. We have seen some of those easterly trade winds back off a little bit in that region. So we've seen the reduction up well. We are getting more warm sea surface temperatures over there. So right now that La Nina is barely very, very focused on the Central Pacific, we would probably refer to this in meteorology as a bit doki la Nina. The expectation right now as we look, for the forecast, the, climate prediction Center's, official projections right now, or for us to remain in La Nina through early spring as we get into spring and summer. Right now, it's kind of out of there's a better chance of going back into neutral. I do think we are getting close to being back into what we would back into what we call neutral conditions. So, you know, kind of a mix of cooler and warmer season with temperatures in those Pacific basins. And, you know, if we look into the summer, there is a chance that we could stay longer. Use a chance will be in neutral. There's even a chance that we will go in to Latin or I'm sorry, El Nino. As we head into the later portion of the summer into the fall.

[Yeager] Isn't that what I heard, though, last year at this time? That’s where we were headed? Wasn't that the talk at this time?

[Hunt] At this time last year, there was a we were in El Nino. We were starting to come out of it. We were heading into neutral. And there was an expectation that we headed to La Nina. We didn't get into La Nina as quickly as I think was projected. This time last year. We didn't officially get declared into La Nina till about Christmas, even though there were certain things that were reminiscent of La Nina, probably back in October. I would say the weather pattern this year has been somewhat, you know, reminds me of a La Nina, but not certainly not in every sort case.

[Yeager] And to define La Nina and El Nino, it doesn't necessarily mean, more moisture or less moisture or regular or buckets of water, which we had in, you know, you mentioned Minnesota and parts of Iowa last year.

[Hunt] Sure. Yeah. El Nino, I mean, you're only referring to the, sea surface conditions, meaning warmer or cold sea surface temperatures. But even the warm, warm central eastern Pacific is lino. It also means you tend to have more anomalously westerly winds, as opposed to easterly winds like you have with a La Nina. And you know, those, go back and forth over time, their natural oscillations, they do have a big impact on weather throughout the entire globe and or part of the country or part of the world. They both have an impact. It's debatable how much impact they have some years and versus others. The issue we have with La Nina, particularly Western Corn Belt, central, Central Plains, High Plains in general, we do tend to have more ridging setting over us late summer, early fall. So we tend to have drier falls, which means that we're missing out on a period of potential recharge of soil moisture, meaning we're going into winter with less moisture that we maybe would prefer to have, which means that we have to have good snowfall that winter. Know we haven't really had that this year, and we have, or we have to have really good moisture in the next spring. If you get that good moisture the next spring, the dry fall isn't necessarily as much of a problem. You know, there are benefits to having a dry fall means you tend to get the crop out of the field pretty quickly, as opposed to a year with a wet fall. Maybe it could be a little bit slower, but right now we are entering into a situation where we do need to have decent washer in the month of March, the start of April for us, heavy reserve a glacier going into this growing season.

[Yeager] And if we get that wet spring, you know, Sue Martin would tell me and she'll tell me here in a few hours when she's on the show, you plant your crop in mud. It's going to be a dud. But at the same time, a little bit of weather premium is something that maybe the market does need on an occasion. And you're not predicting that, but you're just saying that is that's always the potential.

[Hunt] Sure. Yeah. My family has a little more colorful version of that, platinum, but yes.

[Yeager] Yeah, we, I don't have my, swear button beeper right here, but if I did, I'm sure we could probably do that. Okay, I've seen this next map. It's full of color, and I never fully get it. Explain. You call it the analog perspective. What am I looking at? And what does it mean?

[Hunt] Sure. So what I'm showing you here are years where we were coming out of a La Nina going into the spring. So March, first is technically the start of meteorological spring. Meteorologists like things to be orderly. So we, you know, categorize, March, April, may, spring, June, July, August, the summer, so on and so forth. But you're looking at here is showing we like looking to see where we have ridges and troughs in the middle and upper part of the atmosphere, because that means that's where the weather is coming from. And if you tend to have troughs in certain places in the North America, kind of that tends to mean the storm track is going a certain way. So what we're looking at here when we are trough in the northwestern portion is kind of that means in the spring we are getting a storm track is bringing flow into California and probably coming up toward the northeast into the middle of the country, you know, going up and around that ridges over the eastern United States. We tend to have our best rising motion to the east of the troughs. Yes. I'm not going to get to meteorology because we tend never best rising motion, to the east of those troughs. So that would this type of pattern would mean, certainly there would be chances getting some beneficial moisture into the Central Plains. This certainly is a good signal for moisture in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, the lower part of the Mississippi Valley. This also can mean a times a severe weather signal for portions of the southeast. So like 2011, for example, which I'm seeing is an analog that was a very active severe weather across a lot of the, mid south and southeastern US.

[Yeager] And, and that gives then it sounds like that, discussion explanation when we talked about Ohio and Pennsylvania, where they had started to get rain, it's usually the drought starts to relieve itself back to the west, move backwards where it's no longer in drought. And that kind of sounds consistent with what you were saying earlier. Or am I not hearing that right?

[Hunt] Sure. So what I think we I fairly confident we will get some decent improvement in drought conditions across a lot of the Midwest. So certainly if you have a drought right now in your backyard in Illinois and Wisconsin, maybe even eastern Iowa, I think there's a pretty good chance you're going to get the moisture you need in the next six weeks. I actually if you live in Indy, it's so far worse than Indiana. Ohio. I'm more concerned right now of you being excessively wet at times this spring. Say, if we get a really active pattern, there's not too many ways you're going to miss out moisture. And the next couple months potentially, if things are shaping up like we think they might be, I think there's more concern for dryness as we get further toward the West. I think eastern Nebraska, you know, if you look at the CPC outlook, you know, they're favoring kind of, equal chances. Basically, there's no real strong signal favored either way. Most conditions, most things I've looked at right now or, you know, you get to western Iowa or eastern Nebraska is sort of a transition area where we could be fairly good. This spring may not be great. The prognosis gets worse as you get further toward the west, into the western half of Nebraska, into the further south in the pit of the High Plains region. I do think, the prognosis in the southern High Plains actually could be it's not that great. There's definitely I think, going to be some, drought pressures forming that area. But yeah, the eastern side of the Midwest, East, the Mississippi, I feel pretty cop out moisture and yeah, Indiana, Ohio. It could be two at times the spring. It may be an issue with, with planning. I actually had a guy, you know, from Schuyler, Nebraska, asked if there was going to be an issue with prevent planting in parts of the Eastern Corn Belt this year. I said, yeah, I think that could be an issue.

[Yeager] Again, a little weather premium coming to the markets. All right. When you look at your seasonal temperature outlook and it kind of over in the same slide here with the precipitation outlook, it doesn't look like conditions are improving for the southern United States, Arizona, New Mexico, and especially in Texas. And, oh, your head says I've struck a chord.

[Yeager] Why? What's going on there?

[Hunt] So this type of pattern is, you know, again, I do think there's in the next ten days, really chances get some moisture parts of southwest. But the type of pattern that we're heading into coming out here, it's just typically not the friend of the southwest and parts of Texas. We tend to have more ridging there. The storm track tends to be to the north. All the better moisture tends to get shut it off further toward the east. Or just, you know, we're not tapping into if we're not tapping into a strong subtropical jet, we typically don't get a lot of decent shear in the spring in the southwest. Now some years we can get that. This year is that is not favored. I say that can't happen. We meteorologists are always wrong. But right now the prognosis for the southwest is not good. And there's some very, very severe to exceptional drought conditions across a lot of the desert southwest getting into northern Mexico. And I think that's a problem really for more of the High Plains region. Because if we are getting southwesterly flow, the lower levels in the atmosphere surface over that area, that just means it's an extra dry wind. And one reason I do think severe weather could be an issue once you get, certainly into eastern side of Oklahoma and further east, you're like this. That dry line can be artificially pushed further toward the east into deeper into Oklahoma and Texas. And that could really help mean, you know, that a lot of the tornadoes form along that dry line because, you know, severe weather in general, before long, that dry line, because you have tremendous gradients of, moisture. So you have really, really dry air going up against really, really warm, moist air and that you'll create some really strong rising motion if you have the wind shear, you can get some really explosive thunderstorms. Here's like 2011, I think even in some case 2022, we saw more of that a little bit further toward the east into parts of eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama. So it's possible that if we see some of these deeper troughs getting into, say, Colorado and Kansas, and we have that dry line push further toward the east because of dry conditions further toward the west, that I think that is a setup that could be favorable for the lower Mississippi Mid-South region to have some severe weather this spring. Again, I mean, that's going to happen that just there is a historic precedent for that to be the case this coming spring.

[Yeager] Well, and then we have to get into the discussion of is the tornado is tornado alley moving? And it's just I don't think it is. It's just that's or is it I'm not.

[Hunt] The research that does show that in the last few decades, 2 or 3 decades, we have seen more tornadoes in Arkansas, Tennessee, southern Illinois, further east, where we traditionally would have them in Oklahoma, Texas, southern Kansas. I would probably argue Nebraska western Iowa is or has never really been in the true tornado alley, but we certainly had them. We certainly have them up here. Now, 2024 is a very active year for severe weather in, the Western Corn Belt, a lot of the Central Plains, in a way we probably haven't had in a while. But we have definitely seen in recent decades some of that may be shifting a little bit. I think the jury's still out as to exactly if that's a permanent shift, or that's just something we've seen in the last few decades. You know, there's probably already both way on that. That's probably a much that's probably a story for a different day on some level.

[Yeager] Well, the shirts that I see, they all say it's a cyclone state, so I don't know what that means. That could mean something completely different. Oh it's sports. They're telling me now. It's okay.

[Hunt] I would they sort of, you guys are better at us at football. Have been for a while now. You got a really good men's basketball team.

[Yeager] We could totally do a whole half hour about the right. 

[Hunt] We don’t have a lot of love for the Hawkeyes. We do the Cyclones. We kind of. We were okay with the Cyclones. The Hawkeyes is a different story.

[Yeager] Well, that's because you were always beating the Cyclones. Now that the Hawks beat Nebraska, it changes the. And Iowa just wants they just say, well, we need a rivalry. We needed somebody where they can win. Well they went and did that this year. So, you talk about spring weather. You mentioned, you know, severe weather possibilities in certain locations, flooding, prevent plant anything outside of is there maps that give you, do those align in helping you to, to your conclusions of what we may see here?

[Hunt] So if you look at like this analog perspective here where we have temperature precipitation. So temperature on the left and precipitation on the right, you'll notice with that troughing being more prominent over the northwestern United States we tend to have colder temperatures. We where we have more ridging prevalent in the southern eastern U.S. we tend to be warmer than average. And, you know, if we were that storm track coming in where we tend to maybe would think that we get some, areas of low pressure forming off of the Rockies and moving in toward the Midwest. That tends to mean we get these the precipitation. We can't get it in the Central Plains. We certainly will get it in Illinois, Indiana, especially what you get down to the lower Mississippi region, mid Mississippi Valley, southern Missouri, Arkansas. We tend to get a lot of precipitation at some of these springs. Okay. That's not a guarantee this year, but look like that. But if there are places where I would expect there to be more precipitation than average this spring, it would be Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee. The jury's out. I think there's you know, things are a little bit more mixed in Iowa. Nebraska. I do think there will be would be chances to get some precipitation this spring. But I would say, though, we can't afford to have a really dry spring in this, certainly not in our area.

[Yeager] And then when we turn to summer, you know, is there an ideal situation for anybody? And what does that even look like?

[Hunt] So an ideal summer, looking at it from an air standpoint would mean, you know, we probably have a lot of ridging that would be, prominent for most of the summer across the north, you know, western Canada, northwestern Canada and Alaska. And when we have that means we get really strong troughing, we kind of be more proud over the Great Lakes now in the winter. This would be very cold for the Eastern United States. But in the summer, what this does is does a couple of things. One, it means that we're getting routine cold frontal passages as long as we have latent moisture and, you know, the soil and or soils when we or crops are stressed, meaning that they're transpiring frontal passages coming through in the summer often will produce precipitation across the most of the north central. Most of the central U.S will get, some precipitation. So we're getting that. That also means that we're getting cooler high temperatures. So we're having fewer days that are, you know, putting heat stress on the crops. But maybe more importantly, we're getting cooler nighttime temperatures. So we've definitely seen a trend in recent years with, you know, with warming that we are getting warmer minimum temperatures pattern like this would keep us I have a lot of nights in the 50s. That means longer grain filling. That's ideal for great. So if we want to obliterate our, soybean core and you'll records, we want an upper air pattern that looks a lot like this, like we saw in 1994, 2409, in 1400. I do not want a fall that is like 2009 again anytime soon. But the other three years, there was a lot of what I kind of call more ideal conditions. And if we look at sea surface temperatures in those years, there's a reason I'm showing this. So in those years, we tend to be not really strongly in El Nino or Loni. There's kind of more neutral. And we were warmer than average across the north eastern Pacific basin. So south of Alaska, over toward California, they tend to be a little bit warmer for sea surface temperatures. And that's important because that tends to mean that we'll have more ridging off the West Coast. Well, that when that's cold and I'll show you this year a little bit, that tends to mean, more trouble for us in this part of the country.

[Yeager] Well, why don't you fly through the end of your presentation here that we've we've set up? Because then I have one good question at the end. So walk me through what you have.

[Hunt] Sure. So in terms of if you look at like those years a the ideal that means that we're getting moisture everywhere. We're not getting excess about the moisture anywhere. It would. We're cool. And then if we were going to have just an absolutely just 1993 types there, we're going to have a lots of lots of flooding that we're going to have a spring type pattern. That trough sits in the northwestern United States for a long time. That means we have a lot of, you know, southwest flow into the United States. We have open access to the Gulf. We just have thunderstorms just constantly across the entire core belt. And we would just be excessively wet from basically central Nebraska into Indiana and from Kansas up the Minnesota. So that basically with soak the entire region. And those years, we actually saw some pretty big yield reductions because of the amount of flooding, but also a very cool summer across the Northern Plains, warmer than average across the southeast. And then if we were if you want to, now, again, I'm not a market specialist by any stretch of imagination. I'm not going to say if we had, you know, 1980 style drought that we'd have $7 corn. But, you know, if we were going to have a massive drought that would affected the entire region, it's going to look like what I'm showing you on the left for the upper pattern, meaning we're going to be probably have a persistent trough in the Gulf of Alaska off the northwestern United States. We have a strong ridge sitting kind of over the north central portion. This continent. That would be a pretty predominant feature, through most of summer in seaside receptions that, again, that water would be cold across the, Gulf of Alaska. That that basically means if that happens, the atmosphere at some point in the spring, there's lots of momentum means that warmer water from the eastern western side, the Pacific, is it being pushed toward the toward the east, you get more upwelling. And if we get colder water, that that tends to help reinforce troughing in that region tends in especially mid summer, we tend to see that ridging over the north central portions. Condit. One telltale sign that I always watch, where I watch where, when the eastern side of the U.S. starts getting ridging more predominant in the, say, late April May timeframe because that often retrogrades toward the West in the late spring summer. And if we start getting really dry across portions of the southeast Mid-South region, that tends to retrograde or tends to move up toward the north northwest through the summer, in part because if they're going over dry, that return flow from the Gulf, we want that moisture from the Gulf to not lose any of its pep once it gets. But we don't. We want it to be just as moist, as it is in over Arkansas. If Arkansas, Tennessee, southern Illinois, if they're really dry, that moisture coming back up into Iowa, northern Illinois, eastern Nebraska doesn't have as much late moisture. So that means that the this the overall flow kind of gets cut off when we get these ridges set up. And so we lose our atmosphere forcing. And we don't have the, don't have the moisture return. So those are all things that could help me to suppress precipitation. And once we get a large portion of this region with low swell way shear, then we start having reductions in crop evapotranspiration. That affects how the lower boundary layer behaves. And we tend to reinforce hot, dry conditions. Sort of by nature, again.

[Yeager] You've got to you've hinted about a couple of years that this reminds you of. Are we setting up for there's no carbon copy, but is there something that rhymes like this year shaping up?

[Hunt] Well, yes. I think if if there's a year that looks like what the CPC is showing and what some of the other outlooks are showing, 2021 does seem to ring a bell a little bit. In that year, we tended to have a lot of upper level ridging over the northwestern commercial corn. Now, that did extend further east into the northern portion of the United States. Statistically, that was a very warm summer from basically the entire, you know, grain, I'm going to call the entire grain belts of North Dakota down to Kansas. Over in Ohio. A lot of that, though, was early. That was front load. We had a lot of that heat early in June. So once we got in the middle the growing season, we weren't really having too much heat pressure. We also were statistically dry across the western portion of the Corn Belt, but we were getting timely rains that summer. And I think what's really important about that year, and I think the reason that year wasn't a huge problem in our area is because we had a lot of moisture in March that year, so we had some long, steady drought conditions, from 2020. So similar to this year, we we were going into March dry. We had a lot of moisture that really eradicated a lot of moisture concerns. We went in that summer with decent moisture. Once it got hotter, drier, we were able to withstand that. If we end up with a pattern like we had in early June that year, where we have massive ridging over the north central United States, we get some hot, dry conditions. Things may turn a lot more quickly than they did that year without that moisture. So I think that is a I think that your work, because we had that data heat, moisture, we need that moisture to spring for that for 2021 to look like it did. But suffice to say, 2021 is not the worst analog 2022, I think also could be one. That's not good news for Nebraska. So I think if we don't get the moisture to spring, I think the western side, the corn belt, certainly the Nebraska side, the corn Belt, I think could be in for some issues. I'm less concerned about drought pressure in the eastern half the Corn Belt. Least right now. I'm not seeing what signal for that to be a problem so far this year. So I'm not seeing a sign that there's going to be a corn belt. We, you know, widespread, massive drought that would take our corn down by 20 percentage points, that that really is actually a fairly unusual condition that happens fairly infrequently. I don't see that coming this year. Not saying it can't. We already have some. So but again, a lot that's going to depend on how much moisture we get this spring. If March and April are dry, we could be in trouble.

[Yeager] So that means we'll have you on in the middle of the summer. We're in the middle of drought, and I'll have to say I told you so, but I don't know. That's not what not. That's the life when you stick your neck out like that, Eric. And but scientifically, that's what it looks like to you. I totally get it.

[Hunt] Yep. Absolutely. That's my story. I'm sticking to it until I have better evidence. Otherwise.

[Yeager] There you go, Eric. I appreciate the time of the insight. And thank you for, all the colorful charts and explanations of them.

[Hunt] Thank you very much.

[Yeager] My thank you to Eric Hunt, and thank you for watching, listening and reading. We hope you enjoyed this installment of the podcast. New episodes come out each and every Tuesday. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.

Contact: Paul.Yeager@iowapbs.org