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May 30, 2019 May 30, 2019 May 30, 2019 May 30, 2019
Is wheat harvest in trouble?
http://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20190530/7day-rain-forecast.png
Having worked a wheat harvest or three, I understand the anxiety wheat farmers
must be feeling with all this rain.
Wait, farmers feeling anxiety over rain? Are you kidding me? NO, I'm not kidding
you. There are several parts to growing and harvesting wheat, and, well...the
actual HARVESTING part is pretty important. With all this rain, not only does it
increase the risk of certain diseases for the wheat, what with it being damp
all the time, but it also makes it impossible to get out into the fields. There
ain't nothing worse than seeing a combine header deep in mud at the bottom of a
terrace. And the Oklahoma ground IS saturated.
http://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20190530/10inch-soil-moisture.png
http://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20190530/16inch-pct-plant-avail-water.png
Of course all this rain was wonderful at first, at least for the wheat crop., It
helped produce what was one of the most promising crops in recent memory.
According to the USDA's Oklahoma Crop Weather report from May 13, 75% of the
state crop was reported in good or excellent condition, with 21% fair and only
4% in poor conditions. Wasn't too long ago those numbers seemed to be reversed
every spring.
But the rains didn't stop. So far this May, we've seen a statewide average of
10.45 inches, 5.78 inches above normal to rank as the third wettest May and
fourth wettest calendar month since records began in state history. We'll never
catch May 2015's 14.44 inches, THE wettest month on record, but we're way too
close. But much of this rain has fallen across Oklahoma's primary wheat belt,
from southwestern up through north central Oklahoma. That's not to diminish
the wheat that other folks grow outside of that region...that's just what's
considered the primary wheat producing area for the state.
http://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20190530/may1-29-rain-totals.png
http://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20190530/may1-29-rain-depart.png
http://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20190530/may1-29-rain-pct.png
At this point in late May, we'd normally be seeing the first reports of wheat
coming into the grain elevators down across southwestern Oklahoma...reports
which would ramp up quickly over the next couple of weeks until most of the
state was finished in late June. The fields are too muddy, obviously, at least
for the most part. Then we see the forecast for the next seven days at the top
of the page for 2-3 inches of rain, right across prime wheat country, and we
start to wonder. We should get a couple of days off, but come late in the
weekend and early next week, the rains should begin anew again, this time
plunging down into the state from the northwest.
And THEN we could set up in southwesterly flow once again, with smaller storm
systems traveling through that larger flow, setting off more rain chances.
We see that with the increased odds of above normal rainfall across much of the
state late next week into the next.
http://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20190530/june4-8-precip-outlook.gif
http://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20190530/june6-12-precip-outlook.gif
What we don't need is a replay of spring 2007 when rain fell virtually every
day across the state, keeping combines out of the fields and state farmers
harvest just 98 million bushels, well below the state's long-term average of
about 150 million bushels. Some of the crop simply went unharvested, left to
rot in the fields. There was really no other alternative.
So, again, what we need (and ALL of us need this, not just farmers) is a long
stretch of hot, dry and windy weather. Not TOO long, of course. And not TOO
hot, nor TOO windy. That shouldn't be too hard to conjure up, should it?
Gary McManus
State Climatologist
Oklahoma Mesonet
Oklahoma Climatological Survey
(405) 325-2253
gmcmanus@mesonet.org
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