Freeze Alert: Snow and Cold Blasts Corn Belt, Drops as Far South as Mississippi
USFR-Weather 4.17.2021
After a jumpstart to the 2021 planting season for many, colder temperatures and even snow will bring planting to a halt again this week. While the moisture will be good news for areas seeing dryness creep in, the snow and freezing temperatures won’t be a welcome sight for farmers who have crops planted.
“If you're wondering about the chilly temperatures, we're still looking at the Jetstream bringing that into the eastern two thirds of the country anyway, with a shot there for Tuesday on a Wednesday, and then you can see another shot coming a little farther north,” says Mike Hoffman, U.S. Farm Report meteorologist.
Hoffman says the snows will hit Tuesday and Wednesday, but then it’s a battle between the models and a battle between air masses into the following week.
“Here's the thing in this situation, it's pretty cold up in the northeast quadrant of the country, but it warms up in the southern portions and that moves into the Southeast,” says Hoffman. “Now, I use the GFS model here, but the European model is a little more zonal. And so that would actually be a little bit warmer. So, we'll be keeping an eye on things for you as we head through the next seven days or so.”
Hoffman says from snow to rain, a cold front this week could bring chillier air as far south as Louisiana and Mississippi, which will put even the wheat crop at risk.
As for Hoffman’s 30-day outlook, he expects some areas of the country to stay cooler than normal.
“I'm going below normal Northern Great Lakes, northern Mississippi Valley northward,” he says. “But I do think we’ll see above normal temperatures for a much of the Southern Rockies and the southwestern portions of the Plains.”
He says the moisture situation isn’t good news for areas of the country that really need it.
“The 30-day outlook for precipitation shows the Great Lakes and East Coast probably above normal, but below normal for a lot of those dry areas from the western Plains through the middle portions of the Rockies.”
