If early March weather rolls out the way some ag industry experts are predicting, farmers might be tempted to break out their shorts and sunscreen.
“It’s going to be warm, very warm for most of March,” Shawn Hackett, president of Hackett Financial Services said on the latest Moving Iron podcast, with Host Casey Seymore.
What’s at play currently, Hackett said, is a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event that could take temperatures a notch higher than usual during the next few weeks.
Hackett said the polar stratosphere is in the middle stages of developing what he called “one of the top five strongest sudden stratospheric warming events” he’s ever seen going into early March.
“The stratosphere, which normally is super cold, gets displaced and you get this extreme warming above the North Pole. When that happens, then the entire stratosphere gets unstable and starts to lose its cohesiveness,” explained Hackett, whose interest in the weather is fueled by what it can mean to grain markets.
His hope, in fact, is that the weather in early March could be a positive catalyst for grain markets. “It could offer a tremendous cash selling opportunity not only for the old crop but maybe even for the new crop that’s coming along,” Hackett said.
Maybe A Short-Lived Weather Pattern?
But don’t expect higher temperatures to persist beyond the next few weeks. There will likely be colder conditions coming in right behind them by late March to early April, according to Ag Meteorologist Drew Lerner, founder and owner of World Weather, Inc.
Lerner told AgriTalk Host Chip Flory earlier this week he believes two things will come out of the current weather pattern and then go through spring.
First, Lerner believes the moisture availability in the upper Midwest and parts of the western Corn Belt will continue to be lighter than normal, which will encourage farmers to plant.
Second, he believes the risk of late-season frost and freeze across corn and soybean country will be much higher in 2025 than it has been in recent past years.
“We may see a period like right now, where we warm up nicely, and crops will take advantage of that and really get going aggressively. Then, we could turn around and bring a cold wave in and knock those crops down,” Lerner told Flory. “That’s one of my biggest concerns for spring, besides the dryness we already mentioned in the western Corn Belt.
“I do think, though, with that aside, we will see aggressive planting this spring in the western and central parts of the Midwest, because I don’t think we’re going to have so much moisture around that we can’t be that way,” Lerner added.
Beware Of Frost And Freeze
Hackett’s prediction for April weather coincides with Lerner’s concerns. Going back to his prediction for a sudden stratospheric warming in early March, Hackett said that what often follows an SSW about 45 days later is a cooling off trend.
“You have the potential for some very cold, wintry type of weather that can easily bring in a hard freeze. That should create a considerable amount of unfavorable planting season, either delayed planting or planting that gets done and gets frozen over and replanting winter wheat that gets frost as it comes out of dormancy,” Hackett said.
Ken Ferrie recalls farmers in western Illinois were planting early soybeans by March 21 in 2024. He encouraged farmers who want to plant early to exercise some caution.
“An important consideration is whether you have crop insurance,” said Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.
For farmers in the Eastern Corn Belt, Lerner said he doesn’t believe they will be able to plant as quickly as their western brethren because of excess moisture the region has received through the Ohio Valley and is likely to continue to get this spring.
Expect Temperatures To ‘Bounce Around’
As for temperatures, Lerner believes they will average close to normal but will bounce around this spring. “So we’ll be warm, and then we’ll get cold, and we’ll go back into warm again,” he said.
Flory asked Lerner whether he would put some odds on the potential for drought conditions this summer.
“I’d say that we probably have a 25% to 30% chance that we could have a more serious dryness problem in the West. But I am being conservative with that, possibly. I really want to see what happens over these next three to four weeks,” Lerner said.
“There’s no meteorologist out there that I know of that’s ever predicted a bad drought in the summer this far in advance, and I’m not going to be the first one,” Lerner added. “I’ll leave that up for somebody else.”
You can hear Lerner’s conversation with Chip Flory here:
