Farmers across the Midwest can’t seem to catch a break from the rain this week, and the timing couldn’t be more consequential. Pro Farmer’s annual Crop Tour kicks off Monday, sending scouts across a wider swath of the Corn Belt than ever before to groundtruth just how big, or how battered, this year’s corn and soybean crop really is.
The tour comes at a moment when the crop’s story keeps changing by the week.
“Conditions have changed so much since August 1 in the Eastern Belt and in the Western Belt,” says Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk AM and leader of the Eastern Leg of the Pro Farmer Crop Tour. “This crop is still a crapshoot this year.”
Hey ProFarmerTour better bring your scuba gear if you want to check the ear counts here. 14’ tall corn plant only 2’ showing pic.twitter.com/b2cEQacpzV
— Bodie Kitchel (@Bkitch1Bodie) August 13, 2026
What’s Behind the Derecho and the Deluge
The damage is already visible on the ground. Severe storms tore through the Midwest on Tuesday, with the highest recorded wind gust reaching 99 miles per hour. In Madison County, Ohio, the storms flattened cornfields and tore apart buildings. Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa were also hit as the line of storms swept east.
Meteorologist Matt Griffin of BAM Weather, who tracked the derecho as it moved across the Eastern Corn Belt, said the damage extends well beyond Ohio.
“In terms of what he mentioned in Ohio, sure, it may be a little bit more of a narrow area, but further to the northwest, especially eastern Iowa and northern Illinois, there’s this derecho,” Griffin says “That area also got hit hard on Friday of last week as well. So I’m concerned there’s a lot of damage in those spots.”
Griffin pointed to a “ring of fire” pattern, a loop of storm activity wrapping around a dome of high pressure, as to what’s driving the heavy rain from Nebraska east into Ohio over the past week.
“This ring of fire pattern from Nebraska over to the East into Ohio has been prolific, producing heavy rain widespread across Nebraska and especially Eastern Indiana and Ohio. Some streaks of five-plus inches in Eastern Indiana, Ohio, just tremendous amounts of rain and tremendous flooding, which has been ongoing over the last couple days,” he adds.
The pattern isn’t done yet, though Griffin expects it to shift. As of Thursday into Friday, he still saw storm cluster risk for Iowa, northern Indiana, northern Illinois and Michigan. But he expects the ridge of high pressure currently to the east to settle west, refocusing the heaviest activity toward the Plains and Great Lakes in the week-two timeframe.
“Over the next seven days, you can see the amount of rain in Nebraska, Iowa, getting into Illinois, Indiana,” Griffin he says. “I think there can even be a little bit more rain to Michigan, northern Indiana, into western Ohio than what that model indicates.”
Griffin doesn’t see the pattern easing much through the back half of August, either, though he expects it to lose some intensity.
“We don’t necessarily let off the gas into kind of August 20th through the 27th. I still think there are some messy storm clusters in places like Minnesota, Iowa, into the Great Lakes, but it’s just not going to be as extreme as the pattern we’re in right now,” Griffin says. He adds that some rain may also finally reach the drier western and northern Plains.
Griffin says the same setup driving the rain is also parking a dome of heat over the south-central U.S., with the two feeding off each other. He says the heat will cause the storm clusters to fire up and bring more rain. But areas that are under the high pressure, those are the areas that will miss out on any rain.
USDA’s Yield Cut: Too Far, Too fast?
The uncertainty follows a notable move from USDA, which projected the national corn yield for the 2026/27 season at 180.7 bushels per acre, down from 183 bushels projected in July. That cut came even as USDA posted a strong yield number out of Iowa, while a derecho tore through the Eastern Corn Belt this week alongside heavy flooding, and drought continued to erode crop conditions in parts of the Plains.
USDA’s cut was steeper than the average trade guess heading into the report, but Scott Davis of Bullpen Trading was hesitant to argue with the agency’s number.
“It’s always dangerous to disagree with USDA when it’s their number, and that’s the number that counts,” Davis says. “So whenever you’re going to argue with them, you better have a pretty good feeling to go with. Overall, I would say that they really set the trend on a lot of states here very well, excluding last year, they gave us what was a tremendous corn yield.”
If there’s one state Davis isn’t fully sold on, it’s Iowa.
“The only state that I question, when I look at the trends, is that Iowa stands out as a bit of a question mark,” Davis adds. “Compared to the neighbors, Iowa jumped relative to a year ago, and everybody else is kind of down in the Western Corn Belt. I think that fits with what we’ve seen for a lot of Iowa weather.”
Davis says USDA appears to be banking on a more mature crop than the Belt has seen in recent years, which makes the numbers harder to argue with, but also raises questions about how the crop finishes, especially as rain moves back across Iowa this week.
“That makes it a little harder to question the numbers, but also to see the rains that are moving across Iowa this week, to see them really improve things. I think the market’s talking about some improvement in those crop yields at this point,” he says.
Mike North, president of the producer division at Ever.Ag, also questions whether USDA moved too quickly.
“Honestly, that’s where the USDA may have jumped out in front of some of these stories,” North says. “It took a very aggressive cut to yield, and I agree with Scott, as you look at the precip picture going forward, this yield is far from being settled upon, and I think yield could come back up as we go forward. So maybe a little bit too much too fast from a yield cut perspective.”
Both analysts pointed to harvested acres as the industry’s usual release valve for years like this one. Losses to flooding, drought, or disease are baked into the process, North says, even if that’s little comfort to the farmers living through it.
“We have issues every year, it’s a matter of where they come in,” North says referencing the derecho damage this week. “Our heart goes out to the people that have to endure those. It’s baked into the cake, though. That’s how we come to terms with harvested acres versus what we actually plant.”
What it Means for Crop Tour
With conditions diverging so sharply between the flood-hit east and the drought-stressed Plains, this year’s Crop Tour carries extra weight. It’s the first time scouts will gather samples across such a wide geography in an effort to gauge the true size of the U.S. corn and soybean crop , and, with USDA’s own numbers already shifting and analysts split on which direction yield goes from here, the boots-on-the-ground data may matter more than usual.
Scouts begin fanning out across the Corn Belt Monday, with the Eastern leg starting in Ohio. Scouts in the west will begin the tour in South Dakota on Monday.
