Posted on 10/31/2019 7:49:37 PM PDT by Windflier
It isnt supposed to be this cold in October. The official start of winter is still almost two months away, and yet the weather in much of the western half of the country right now resembles what we might expect in mid-January. All-time record lows for the month of October are being set in city after city, and this extremely cold air is going to push into the Midwest by the end of the week.
Temperatures in the heartland will be up to 50 degrees below normal, and unfortunately about half of all corn still has not been harvested. Due to unprecedented rainfall and extreme flooding early in the year, many farmers faced extraordinary delays in getting their crops planted, and so they were hoping that good weather at the end of the season would provide time for the crops to fully mature and be harvested. Unfortunately, a nightmare scenario has materialized instead. A couple of monster snow storms have already roared through the Midwest, and now record low temperatures threaten to absolutely wreck the rest of the harvest season.
When temperatures get significantly below zero for more than a few hours, scientists tell us that it will kill standing corn
And right now we are facing a crisis because less than half of all U.S. corn has been harvested.
In fact, according to the latest USDA Crop Progress Report just 41 percent of all U.S. corn has been harvested so far
In its weekly Crop Progress Report, the USDA pegged the U.S. corn harvest at 41% complete, below the trades expectation of 48% and below a five-year average 61%.
Minnesota is behind the most regarding picking corn: 22% vs. a 56% five-year average.
So when I used the term nightmare scenario earlier, I was not exaggerating.
The low temperatures that we have seen this week are hard to believe. According to USA Today, the temperature in one community in Utah actually hit 45 degrees below zero on Wednesday
Subzero cold was recorded as far south as the Grand Canyon on Wednesday morning, the Weather Channel said. Big Piney, Wyoming, plunged to minus 24 degrees before sunrise Wednesday.
Notorious cold spot Peter Sinks, Utah, dipped to an incredible minus 45 degrees early Wednesday. This appeared to be the coldest October temperature on record anywhere in the Lower 48 states, according to Utah-based meteorologist Timothy Wright.
That is seriously cold.
Excuse me, but that is Doctor Gretl Thorninmyside. Just correcting the record. LOL
” Time to buy a coat...”
And corn futures.
The fall harvest of 77, in Mercer county, IL, was rain and more rain. The only good thing was that I met my future wife late Sept, and because the opportunities to harvest were limited by muddy conditions, I got to spend many evenings driving into Moline to see her.
Went to be with her Thanksgiving mid afternoon. Sunny, and almost 60. That night winter came and stayed until late Feb.
I remember picking corn in mid December, driving the combine over acres of bottom land that had water standing, in some spots as much as 6-8”, but was frozen solid. I would just lower the corn header down and let it skate across it. We got done a few days before Christmas. A good thing. The storms that came from then up to New Years left a couple of feet of snow in the cornfields.
Destroyed outdoor weed grows in Michigan
Everyone had to pull in immature plants
Bud rot
27 in Nashville outlying areas like where Im typing
OH MY GOD! You’re right - what shall we do? Oh, wait, that’s right - nothing. Live your life, die just like God intended for you to do, settle your account with Him.
A college fraternity brother inherited the family farm in Missouri. He started selling equipment and implements and focused on growing that business rather than the actual farming. He was successful and got quite rich. Smart man followed the California Gold Rush business model.
27 right now in northern Az desert at 4000 ft elevation. This normally doesn’t happen until a week after Thanksgiving. But the crop situation nation wide is going to hurt, too many other sources depend on that corn such as ethanol and feeding stock. Several of us here have been calling this for about three years now.
Note that solar insolation peaked and started to decline about 8,000 years ago moving us into the new coming glacial period. It's pretty self explanatory as a visual.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abrupt-climate-change/Glacial-Interglacial%20Cycles
In Dacula, Ga yesterday the temperature it 78 as the high and we are at 30 this morning.
I remember living in Texas in the early 80s and it was over 100 in the Rio Grande Valley and snow in Lubbock on the same day.
Can’t they put giant blocks of dry ice in the fields so that when the CO2 dissipates it warms the area around the crops??
Of course it fluctuates/varies in trends even by the decades, and there are the geographical anomalies, but the overall long term global average has been headed colder for the last 10,000 years.
It was warmer during the last interglacial than it has reached during this current interglacial. And judging by the chart I shared we are actually late for the relatively rapid drop as the previous glacial periods exemplify.
But out here in the desert it is pretty common to have drastic differences from highs to lows as you mention. But the last three years summers has come way late, and winter has been coming far sooner than normal.
Maybe orange juice futures too...
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