Fall Fieldwork Stymied by Rain, Snow

BY DANIEL GRANT, FARM WEEK NOW

Aron Carlson, a Winnebago County farmer, rooted for the arrival of a cold snap that’s gripped Illinois.

He, and other farmers, however, could have done without the combination of heavy snow in the northwest, mixed precipitation elsewhere and damaging winds that knocked down power lines and tree limbs at numerous locations.

A portion of the northwest side of the state, from Macomb to Chicago, received anywhere from 8 to 14 inches of snow from “Winter Storm Bruce.”

That pushed snowfall totals around the state for November to a range of 5 to 15 inches, with a high of 18.4 inches (a new record for the month) in Moline, according to Jim Angel, state climatologist with the Illinois State Water Survey.

“It was a very cold month and also very snowy,” said Angel, who noted preliminary numbers Nov. 29 pegged the average temperature in November at just 35.3 degrees, about 7 degrees below average and the eighth-coldest on record. “In southern Illinois, they got a lot of rain. It was quite a contrast.”

Precipitation totals from Oct. 30 – Nov. 28 ranged from 2.5 to 4 inches in the northern two-thirds of the state to 4 to 8 inches in southern Illinois.

This follows a roller coaster ride of weather swings in October and the 19th-wettest September on record.

Farmers subsequently remain mostly spectators for fall fieldwork, as they wait for drier conditions.

About 95 percent of corn and soybeans were harvested nationwide as of the first of this week, 4 percent behind average for beans and 2 percent behind for corn.

Carlson had about 150 acres of corn left to harvest before the arrival of Bruce.

“I have some fields to the north that only got about 2 inches. But where the bulk of my corn is left recorded 10 to 12 inches (of snow),” said Carlson, immediate past president of the Illinois Corn Growers Association. “It’s a wet, heavy snow, so it’s going to insulate the ground. Unfortunately, we’ll be parked a while.”

Carlson was hoping for a deep freeze so he could finish harvest on frozen soil. Instead, the soil likely will remain muddy once the snow melts.

He said he usually finishes harvest by Thanksgiving. But this year still isn’t as trying as the 2009 crop year, when it took until February 2010 for Carlson to finish harvest of high-moisture corn.

Whenever conditions dry enough for farmers to return to fields, there should be adequate crop storage space despite record yields.

“There’s still capacity there to be able to handle the crop,” Jeff Adkisson, executive vice president of the Grain and Feed Association of Illinois, told the RFD Radio Network®. “It’s just a matter of what the quality of the crop’s going to be when you’re able to get out there and bring it in.”

Winter wheat conditions continue to decline as volatile fall weather gives way to winter this month. The portion of the Illinois wheat crop rated good to excellent slipped from 66 percent on Oct. 28 and 64 percent Nov. 4 to 54 percent this week.