Causing concern for the 2024 growing season to continued dryness here in Iowa and across the upper Midwest. It finally does feel like fall around here after a couple of cooler mornings. Not quite frost worthy so the growing season continues with lower daytime temperatures as well. DTN Ag Meteorologist John Barranick says that is certainly an indication that times are changing.
“It’s fall and you should expect huge changes in temperatures and swings and precipitation and all that. It’s just a normal part of going from our summer season to our winter season and that transition period can end up being kind of drastic.”
He says the concerning part is certainly the continued dry weather across much of the state of Iowa, even though some rains have fallen in key growing regions.
“We’re going to need a lot more here to help out that, and there’s still a lot of soil here that could use some more rains. If you look at soil moisture right now, we’ve made some major improvements across the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, but we still have deficits in large parts of Iowa and Missouri, parts of the eastern Midwest, down in the southwestern Plains as well. It’s going to take some time and usually we see a lot of that, during the summertime anyway, summer is when we deplete our soil moisture. In fall, winter, spring and then we try to build it back up again.”
No question about that. And of course you remember we were having similar conversations last fall with the low river levels and a dryer growing season and yet somehow by the time this spring rolled around, we did manage to have across much of the state a full soil moisture profile.
