It should be another productive week on the harvest front for Iowa growers.
The recent weekly crop progress reports have been keeping harvest ahead of normal and a big reason for that is the stellar weather conditions this month. Iowa state climatologist Dr. Justin Glisan tells the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network that it?s been mostly warm and dry during the 2020 harvest. He adds that also means farmers need to consider safety factors regarding fires.
?We?ve had excellent conditions across the state agriculturally,? Glisan said. ?These are ideal conditions for farmers to get out into the fields. The combines are rolling. With these dry conditions, though, we have seen some combine fires out there and so that?s one thing that we have been stressing. Given the precipitation deficits, the dryness we?ve seen and lower relative humidity, be cautious of that. But, yes, excellent conditions for harvest activity.?
Glisan says most of Iowa is expected to see dry conditions continuing to lock in moving forward, which will give farmers a large string of good days to get this year?s crop out and finished up.
?This is a result of the tropical activity that we?re seeing,? Glisan said when describing the continuing dry conditions. ?The tropics are really lighting up lots of Atlantic storms out there. It?s kind of backed up mid-latitude flow and that gives us a stagnant weather pattern where we have been locked into warmer and dryer conditions.?
?Our short-term outlooks have some variability in there,? Glisan continued. ?We?re kind of seeing those higher probabilities for warmer temperatures start to diminish moving back towards near normal. If you look at the 6-10 day and 8-14 day outlooks getting into the second half of October, we are actually seeing some probabilities of colder than average temperatures.?
Dr. Justin Glisan can be reached by calling 515-281-8981.
