Record-breaking heat across the South and Midwest. Unprecedented flooding that shuttered Yellowstone National Park this week. Hail that proved to be devastating to corn fields in Kansas. The extreme weather can all be attributed to a ridge of high pressure parked over the country.
USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey says while the ridge of high pressure is parked over the country, it has been shape shifting the past few days.
“This year, 2022, it does appear that we have a rather intense ridge of high pressure,” says Rippey.
Rippey says nearly every year the U.S. sees a ridge of high pressure developing across the country, but where this particular ridge is located, and how pronounced it ends up being, is what changes from year to year.
“You’ve got years like 1988, 1995, or 2012, where that ridge intensifies, moves across the Midwest and causes huge implications for corn and soybeans,” says Rippey. “Other years like 2011, we’ve got a powerful Ridge, but it stays parked over Texas and Oklahoma and New Mexico. Other years, we don’t have much of a ridge at all, it’s weaker, and it doesn’t really have major impacts on any major agricultural areas.”
Cacti in our corn field, sheesh this actually is the desert 🌵🌵 pic.twitter.com/fkaPrJWG2e
— Jason Birkenfeld (@jasonbirkenfeld) June 14, 2022
This year, he says there were early signs the ridge would be severe, as Texas saw triple digit heat earlier this year.
“We saw it become established over the desert southwest, it’s made a run across the great plains now more recently into the Midwest, the mid-South, and even the Southeast with early triple digit heat, that in fact is maybe a bit of a warning sign ,” explains Rippey.
Read more: How Will High Temperatures Impact Crop Conditions and the Grain Markets?
While the heat isn’t entering the Corn Belt at key pollination time for the area, it’s a different story farther south.
“We’ve got a lot of corn silking across the south, that’s not going to have a big impact on the national number. But for these regional and state producers, it’s a big deal to see temperatures like 102 or 103 degrees when corn is silking, that is going to have an impact on that crop,” Rippey adds.
The high pressure ridge is also bringing record night-time temperatures, as well as severe storms.
“One of the keys with these strong ridges of high pressure is that a around the periphery of these systems around the west, the north and the east sides of these ridges, they do tend to be very active in terms of thunderstorm activity, it’s often referred to as a ring of fire,” he explains.
York and Hamilton Counties are the top two corn producing Counties in Nebraska and both rank in the top 10 in the Nation. Areas of these counties have been brutally hit with hail and wind the past 7 days. Corn was V6 & V7 pic.twitter.com/BDOqwkIs6r
— Michael Bergen (@michael_bergen) June 15, 2022
The edge of the ridge is what has brought on high winds, heavy rains and damaging hail.
“That’s not going to change,” says Rippey. “Now, as this ridge shifts westward later this week, it’ll take some of the rain with it. And we’ll get more the showers and thunderstorms back across the northern Plains and Northwest.”
Rippey does think the high heat this week will cause some areas of the country to start experiencing flash drought. But will that drought continue to creep into the Midwest and intensify over the summer months? He says it all depends on how the ridge of high pressure shifts a month from now. .
“In about a month from now, we’re going to be looking at where that high is parked. Is it going to affect production in the 2022 season? And all of that depends on how that strong ridge of high pressure plays out where it is parked in early to late July when all that corn will be moving through reproduction,” says Rippey.
