USDA’s Joint Ag Weather Facility says in the Corn Belt, cool, cloudy, showery weather continues to restrict most fieldwork operations. Some of the heaviest rain is falling in the lower Ohio Valley, USDA explains.
In the West, USDA reports very warm weather continues from California into the Southwest. However, cooler air is arriving in the Northwest, it adds. “Dry weather throughout the region continues to promote a rapid pace of fieldwork, which has been running behind schedule in many areas due to previously cool, showery spring weather,” USDA details.
On the Plains, chilly conditions persist. In fact, a frost advisory is in effect early today across portions of northern Nebraska and the Dakotas, for temperatures mostly in the range of 30 to 35°F, it details. “However, dry weather throughout the region favors a gradual return to fieldwork, following recent rainfall,” USDA continues.
In the South, USDA reports one batch of showers is exiting the Atlantic Seaboard, but another large area of rain is spreading across the mid-South. “Nearly all areas of the South, except Florida’s peninsula, have received substantial rainfall in recent days, slowing fieldwork but boosting soil moisture in areas that had been dry,” USDA explains.
In its five-day outlook, USDA says a storm system currently centered over the Tennessee Valley will drift northeastward, reaching coastal New England by Friday. “Meanwhile, another low-pressure system will cross southern Canada, with a disturbance along the storm’s trailing cold front emerging across the nation’s mid-section during the weekend,” USDA continues. Five-day rainfall totals could reach 1 to 3 inches across much of the eastern one-third of the U.S., with much-needed rain expected later today across Florida’s peninsula, according to USDA. Totals of 1 to 2 inches may occur across central sections of the Rockies and Plains, mainly on Friday, it continues. Elsewhere, little or no precipitation should occur in California, the Great Basin, and the Southwest, USDA reports. “Following a brief spell of cooler weather, warmth will return across much of the West late in the weekend and early next week. At the same time, the South and East should experience a brief weekend warm spell,” according to USDA.
